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THE ART OF THE 

MACINTOSH 




DISCOVERIES ON THE PATH TO COMPUTER ENLIGHTENMENT 







This book was 



written, 

edited, 

designed. 











vA/\ftM^V\/^/A,^ArV\/VV\AAAAMrt^V\/'V^^vA,VW\A/\/^^ 




HE ART OF THE 

MACINTOSH 



MICHAEL 



G R 



N 



Z 



Z 



DISCOVERIES ON THE PATH TO COMPUTER ENLIGHTENMENT 



Z 



X 



RUNNING PRESS 

PHILADELPfflA, PENNSYLVANIA 











All rights reserved under the Pan-American and Intemaiional 
Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced 
in whole or in part in any fonn or by any means electronic 
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by 
any information storage and retrieval system now Imown or 
hereafter invented, without written permission from the 
publisher. 

Canadian representatives: General Publishing Co., Ltd., 

30 Lesnull Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 2T6. 

987654321 
That digit on right indicates the number this printing. 

Library of Congresss Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

Green, Michael, 1943- 

Zen and the Art of the Macintosh. 

1. Macintosh (Computer) — ^Programming. 2, Computer gra- 
phics. I. Title. 

QA76.8.M3G75 1986 005.265 86-10201 
ISBN 0-89471-347-7 (Paper) 

Jacket design by Michael Green 

Printed and bound by Port City IVess, Baltimore, MD. 

This book may be ordered by mail from the publisher. 
Please include $1.00 for postage. But, hey, try your book- 
store firsil 

Running Press Book Publishers 
125 South 22nd Street 
PhUadelphia, PA 19103 





For 

aU 

those 

who 

have 

gone 

gone 



gone 

beyond 



gone 

beyond 

going... 





and then 
returned 
to show 
the way... 



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1.06 



A 



P T ERS 




THE DISCOVERY OF THE DIGITAL ZONE 12 | 

Wherein the author discovers an alternate universe. 



SAVING THE WORLD WITH SILICON 5 1 

Are those chips cultural antitoxins? 



THE SEDUCTIVE FASCINATION OF THE COMPUTER 79 

Explorations of a fearful symmetry. 



ZEN ART MAC ART 100 | 

Reflections on the too of bit-mapped graphics. = 



THE RELENTLESS FASCINATION OF THE COMPUTER 130 | 

It can seem like a dance. Then again, it can seem like a trance. E 



CHOPPING WOOD, CARRYING WATER 149 | 

Beyond the biocomputer, turning around. = 



NUTS & BOLTS & BITS 214 | 

The author reveals some of the secret techniques used in creating this book. = 



II I I I I I I I 

1 IJOI \J02 1.03 1.04 likS 1J06 1X17 1X18 



lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 







A book is like a living thing; it grows according to its 
own inner laws. This one grew slowly. My gratitude to 
Manny Levin and Virginia Conway; their patience and 
confidence was the nourishment that brought it to 
flower and then to fruit. And to my wife Salfy for her 
perfect insights, to #1 son Kabir for his perfect inter- 
ruptions, and to His Holiness who was The Opener. 



THANKS 



WHO 



THE 



SEED 



AND 



THE 



TO YOU 
WATERED 



TENDED 



TREE... 








Macintosh is a 
registered 
trademark 
licensed to Apple 
Computer, 
Inc.MacPaint, 
MaeWrite, 
MacDraw. 
Switcher, 
Imagewritcr, 
LaserWriter Plus, 
the MacPIus, and 
the Apple Logo 
are trademarks of 
Apple Computer, 
Inc.MonsterNlacis 
a trademark of 
LEVCO.MacNifty 
is a trademark of 
the Kctic Group. 
Paint Cutler is a 
trademark of 
Silicon Beach. 
ThunderScan is a 
trademark of 
Thunderwarc, 

Inc. Mac 3 — D is a 
trademark of 
Challenger 
Software. 
BillPaint is a 
trademark of Ann 
Arbor Softworks. 
MacMemories is a 
trademark of 
Image World, Inc. 
PageMaker is a 
trademark of the 
Aldus 

Corporation. 
MAGIC is a 
trademark of New 
Image 

Technology, 
Inc.MacDraft is a 
trademark of 
Irutovalive Data 
Design, Inc. Ea^ 
3— D is a 
trademark of 
Enabling 

Technologies, Inc. 
MaeVision is a 
trademark 
of Koala 

Technologies 
Corporation. 
ClickAit, Qick 
An Effods, and 
QickAn Letters 
are a trademark of 
T/Maker Co. Mac 
the Knife is a 
trademark of 
Miles Computing, 
Inc, The Card 
Shoppe is a 
trademark of 
Axion, Inc. Fluent 
Fonts is a 
trademark of 
Casady Co. 
Corvus is a 
trademark of 
Corvus Systems, 
Inc. Data Frame 
20 is a trademark 
of SupcrMac 
Technology. 

**Basically we’re 
all alike. And 
we’re probably 
nostalgic, not for 
what we would 
like to know, or 
for things outside 
ourselves, but for 
our own dreams, 
our own impuse 
toward a 

revolution in our 
inner life, which 
is: the discovery 
of p^ty, of 
simplicity, of 
naturalness, such 
as the faces of 
children or the 
voice of the one 
whom we have the 
habit of calling 
Divinity.** 

— Marc Chagall 

What we arc 
trying to sec is 
\^^t is looking! 



-Wei WuWii. 



Introduction 



NEAT! 

IT HAS TO BE THE UNIVERSAL RESPONSE TO THIS 
machine. I first heard it in the Computer Shack of 
the U of P where college kids were gathered 
around a new demo Mac. Two years later the Mac 
still evokes the same universal word of admira- 
tion— from six year olds, or from starchy corporate 
programmers. Neat! 

and I should add. This book is 

a walk-through testament to the extraordinarily 
compressed evolution of the Mac, from its 126k 
Dark Age origins, through the Classical 312 period 
and into its present Imperial might of four million 
bytes of memory. These pages also bear the mark 
of each new graphic aid to come along— both in 
software and hardware. Hands down the most sig- 
nificant of them all was... 






The LaserWriter. Together with a digitizer and a 
page design program, it initiated a whole new slick 
high-resolution ball game. (And changed the look of the 
book so much I felt obliged to go back and redo the text 
in many of the early solo MacPaint pages.) 

Throughout its creation, ZEN AND THE ART OF THE 
MACINTOSH gathered momentum with a will of its own. 
What started out as a simple How-to manual with a 
catchy title became not only an exploration of 
advanced personal computer graphics, but to my 
own amazement, an electronic Pilgrim* s Progress; 
the illustrated log of an outsider navigating the 
busy binary pathways of computer enlightenment. 




J write and illustrate books, using the 
I '\ traditional tools-pen, paintbrush, type- 

writer. Computer graphics never moved me though. 
The art seemed heartless and industrial — ideal for 
Superbowl logos — ^but not for me. In fact, I found 
the whole cultish Omni magazine gee-whiz- 
futurism around computers offputting-particularly 
when contrasted with jittery teenage arcade game 
addicts, or the boringly opaque world of business 
spreadsheets. I inclined toward the opinion that 
sihcon chips were an alien spawn bent on replacing 
we humanoids as this planet’s dominant life-form. 

Then the tedium of endlessly retyping my last 
manuscript finally jogged my common sense. I saw 
that a word processor could simply be a no-jive, 
useful tool. I would get one. 

You don’t just go out and buy a computer. 
Like Marriage or joining a fraternity, this particular 
rite of passage begins with The Search. Computers 



16 





Then I saw an 
incredibly 
detailed 
drawing of a 
Japanese 
girl displayed 
on the new 
Macintosh. 



not only have widely varying prices and capabili- 
ties, but distinct personalities as well, and the one 
you choose should match up to your own. 

An interesting discovery during the quest for 
my new TechnoMate was that arcade-style games 
had been replaced by the interactive text adventure 
as the computer diversion of choice. 

In case you haven’t yet been entranced by this 
phenomenon, I should explain that in a text adven- 
ture, you are the hero on some vague exploit wan- 
dering freely around an imaginary world by passing 
from one juncture to the next. Each juncture pre- 
sents multiple possibilities and predicaments; you 
type your response into the computer. The results 
then read out (Text) on the screen, and off you go 
again (Adventure). 

And again, and again... until you find the 
Mystic Jewel of Zit, or are destroyed by the 
Necromancer, or what have you. 

Text adventures seemed to have interesting 
possibilities. A new, involving literature du karma: 
novels where the reader’s cleverness and wisdom 
would determine the outcome. Hmmm. 

Following the classic Silicon Valley Scenario, 
I (1) came up with the necessary Highly Original 
and indeed Bankable Idea for a text adventure; (2) a 
friend appeared with the venture capital needed to 
realize it... and (3) a software company was bom! 

Several months later I had a beautifully tan- 
gled MS of interlocking situations. But as an il- 
lustrator I was feeling oppressed. Nothing but 
words, words, words. How about pictures in this ad- 
venture? Alas, the clutsy “hi-res” graphics around 
only promised to duU the imagination, not spark it. 

Then I saw an incredibly detailed drawing of a 
Japanese girl displayed on the new Macintosh. 

17 



It demonstrated a whole new level of graphic 
finesse for personal computers. Even though the 
Macintosh was ostensibly a business machine, it 
seemed to be a harbinger of things to come for 
designers and artists as well. I bought one. 




This is The Wizard Dis. My first picture. 

It took me the better part of a day to learn the 
basic MacPaint tools and draw him. 

I was fascinated. 

Somehow the process of laying down lines 
and forms, then moving them around, erasing and 
restoring them was characterized by an electric 
feeling of lightness: you could almost feel how the 
picture was just a dancing pattern of charged 
particles in a microchip, and I was coaxing them 
into becoming a wizard’s face. 

Then I discovered that I could... 




...ZOOM into any section of the drawing by 
evoking a command called Fat Bits, then tailor the 
minute dots on the screen individually, ..Vikt going 
in here and getting the highlights on the pupils just 
right. 



Most extraordinary. 

First, the ability to erase and alter to my 
heart’s content, and now this power to get into 
every nook and cranny. I felt Hke a scientist 
learning to redesign atoms; a microsurgeon operat- 
ing on reahty. 

I started to pick up speed. I found that once I 
had my wizard, I could play around with him. Like 
this... 



19 



A few reflections 





20 



A Few Reflections Indeed 



/ was in deep trouble. Who would have guess- 
ed the strange delight this new tool would bring? 
My attention was riveted, my imagination was 
zapped, at the end of a day at the screen I would 
still be happily noodling around like a kid with a 
new electric train. But this excitement had creat- 
ed a strange predicament: a substantial amount of 
money had already been invested into my text 
adventure, and the simple truth was that my inter- 
est in finishing it had dropped to zero. 

An electronic portal to a whole new world of 
graphic possibilities had opened before me, de- 
manding immediate exploration, and I had enthu- 
siastically let myself be drawn in. In fact, I was 
hooked, captivated by the sheer amount of care- 
ful and intense planning that had been so grace- 
fully compressed into its circuitry and software. 

A waning interest in projects is normal; you 
can usually revive it, and tough it out until you 
do. But now I had entered the 
Secret Garden of the compu-j 
ter age-the DigitalZone-and ^ 
my attention had been to- 
tally copped! / couldn't 
even imagine working on 
that text adventure now. 













UNEXPECTEDLY, IT WAS THE MACINTOSH that rescued me 
from this bind. Like many solutions, it seems simple and self- 
evident in retrospect, but I was feeling pretty jammed at the time, 
and it hit me like a bolt of lightning. It happened like this... 

I was designing a letterhead for a friend. It began as a fairly routine 
exercise, but let me walk it through in detail. 

First I typed the name out in big double-spaced caps. 



HIGHLA N D DAIRY 

Next a border. Better yet, a double border. 


STUDIOS 


HIGHLAND 


DAIRY 


STUDIOS 


OK. How about 






HIGHLAND 


DAIRY 


STUDIOS 


Still boring. Let’s enlarge the first and last letters for a little snazz. 





_YtJie ) 


1 


H IGHLA N D 


DAIRY 


S T U D I 0 ^ 



J 1 



22 



Getting closer. Friendly FAT BITS will help us dress up the S, put a 
little flair in the H, and redo the the. What else? 



I- — - ■ — I 

IGHLAND DAIRY STUDIO 
J L 

Play around, of course. There is such a range of things that Mac- 
Paint can do to an image that once you get familiar with its tools, 
your horizons really open up. Designs start sprouting out in quite 
unexpected ways. A little experimenting produced this oval. Too 
heavy...but it looks a little like a sun. 







Or is that too mechanical? Ah! WTiat if the sun was rising over a 
landscape? 



23 



Like so! 




Once you have something to work with, and start rol- 
ling, it’s hard to resist the excitement of experi- 
menting with the limitless number of special effects 
obtainable by combining two or more tools. For 
instance, TRACE EDGES, EDIT PATTERN, and FELL can 
create this... 




variation on a themo 












...almost instandy! 



24 





And COPY, plus FLIP VERTICAL make 



and... 



lo 



OU find yourself 
abandoning 
conscious 
purpose and 
going along 
with the 
digital flow 
of the moment. 
Like, zeroing in 
on some little area 
of your work. 



reflection 



a breeze. . . 



Nit X 
MIf > 
picking 
jobs 
like 



this 



25 







26 







I You’re goin 



What happened to that Letterhead? Good 
question. Let us now pause in this drama- 
tic re-creation of my excursion into the 
DigitalZone, and make an important 
point: Good design depends on good 
timing. 



27 












28 





V 



■V. 



If you freeze it... 



too soon, it’s still unformed and incom- 
plete. Premature. 



But if you play around too much, you’ll 
wind up with something over-worked, 
baroque, or wifty. You lose touch with 
the vitality of the original impulse, or 
cover it up so that no one else but you 
sees it. 



You have to catch the moment on the 
wing, so to speak. 



However • •• 




29 



M acPaint 

is so fast and so fun, 
it just leads you 
on and on. You don’t 
want to stop, even when 
you know you should. 

What to do? 
I suddenly caught on to 
the power of the 
command save as. 
It was a conceptual 
safety net. 

With it I could snapshot 
and stash away any 
graphic idea, any time, 
and continue playing 
around with a copy of it. 
With impunity-and without 
missing a beat. 

This had a wonderfully 
liberating effect. 




Ihe tendency to freeze up ?i design just as it starts look- 
ing good just dissolved away. Playful process took over. 
The logo became a movie, and I was both director and 

spectator. Neat! What’s next? 



u 


'/L 


1 • • • 


: ^ 
f:. 


1 •, 


[m/ 1 








IIIP 




K ^ 









>••: ../'S' 




I had sailed 
right past doing 
the letterhead 
into the clear 
open space of 
pure doing. 

Unfettered to 
particular goal, my 
eyes began to see the 



. .. • •• 

'Tf- 



of unexpected 
possibilities 






everywhere! 

Now, this is not 
something extra- 
ordinary. It is a 
state of freshness 
and originality that 
we all know and have ex- 
perienced one time or 
another. It's called... the 

creative process. 




M W . 1 1 1 1 1 ^ . j I j, K 1 




• . .* *.V 

: **iv* . - * ; ’ ’ . * .r” :: ;.•* , ’.A.../ 

; I-: .= •. :• •• . • . •. .• •• • : :• • 't:-- : •= ••• : .• : •• • • c-.a v-v::' r . : - v: 



32 





33 




just ignore it 
most of the time. 





duties of the world. 




...Or SO we think. 




36 





And we become so used to this routine pattern of 

thinking and doing and BEING 



ABODE 




...that it becomes 
imprinted 

and we lose access 
to other states of being. 



Worse, we lose 
erej 




o Or 

O 

o plain 
rorgGt 
stout 
thorn 




Remembering is a start, of 
course. But slipping back 
into the playful, creative 
stream entails a change 
of consciousness, and 
usually requires more 
than nostalgia or wishful 
thinking. 



37 






Its a kind of psychic leap that does It! Letting go! 
Kfds do It all the time. 



But THERE’S A CATCH. The harder you try, the 

more elusive the execution. 



The reason is simple. While the 
creative process is character- 
ized by a light and jaunty attitude 
very close to not caring at all, the 
part of you that’s always taking 
charge of “getting there” is the 
same old heavy-handed element 
that’s been running the Goal 
Oriented Express all along, 
and, as usual, thinks it can force 
the issue to get results. 

No way! The gates of heaven can- 
not be stormed, nor are the muses inclined to grant their 
boons to those who lack abandon. 




38 







A. 



.nyway, the most important characteristic of the cre- 
ative state is that it doesn’t have to stay focused solely on 
drawing or writing or any other of the so-called arts. It can 
just as easily spill over into real life and 
illuminate jam-ups there. It did. Re- 
member my stalled text adven;;^ 
ture? I saw it in a clear 
light now, and the solu- 
tion to my impasse 
came in a flash! 



❖ 



39 







40 












V 




ON WITH 
BOOK 



41 


















The all-important title came immediately and without 
struggle: ZEN and the art of the macintosh. I liked 
it. It was intriguing. 



"* f.**I*s"**I** 








The 

“Art of the 
Macintosh” 
part was 
obvious 
enough... 



CLEARLY, A BOOK 
ABOUT THE CREATIVE 
POSSIBE^riES OF THE 
MAC... 

A KIND OF EXTENDED 
GRAPHIC SAFARI 
EXPLORING THE 
FURTHEST REACHES 
OF MACPAINT, 

AND ITS POTENTIAL 
TO OPEN UP 
NEW TERRITORY. 








But I knew 
it was right. 

I sensed that 
an important 
quest was 
unfolding here. 

...And that if 
I pursued 
the matter 
with a spirit 
of open 
inquiry, 
the content 
of the book 
could not but 
move into 
deeper 
territory. 



46 




Little 
did I 
realize 
what strange 
adventures 
lay ahead. 




47 










48 



ADVENTURES OF 





49 








Dear Reader, 

For years I have regarded computers with deep suspicion. 
But as the old Taoist saying goes, "What you resist you 
become." To my own amazement (as well as my friends'), i 
found mvself hooked on one . 

A strange turn of fate. But now, with a book to do, I 
could give myself over without reservation to the 
"relentless fascination of the computer." 

I became a hacker — no, a Macker . Professional class. 
Assignment: Venture boldly forth where no man has gone 

before. Take the Macintosh and MacPaint and plumb their 
secrets, their limits, their natural style. Flight test 
any soft and hardware that will help the voyage. Have a 
good time . Let the book grow organically from what you do 
and discover. Learn. And bring back the results. 

And — yes — the simple letterhead on this page is the final 
result of all that business back there. After all, to 
satisfy real-world realities you do have to keep your head 
screwed on straight. When all is said and done, less is 
often more . 



Onward! 





**The willow paints the wind / without usir^ a brush.** 






51 





©CHAPTER TWO© 














mmBmM 






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i4^§B>'^ 

mm-\ 



k.>:vVVv:!<'J 



*W 

♦lii 

1^11 



WMi 















WHEREIN 

WE 

EXPLORE 

THE 

POSSIBILITIES 

OF... 











ELACiOn^hiP^ 



WITH MACHINES ARE 
NOTHING NEW. As a people 
we deeply identify widi our tech- 
nological creations, and tend to give 
ourselves over to them somewhat 
unreservedly. America’s passionate 
and long-standing love mfair with 
the automobile is the legendary ex- 
ample. But the computer brings an 
altogether new level of intimacy to 
this situation, and is capable of 
drawing an extraordinary variety of 
people under its spell. For many the 
experience soon assumes the pro- 
portions of a new love affair, with 
all that that implies. 



"Ttie compuier 
!s btj sU odds 
the mest entra- 
□rdinartj af the 
techaalaghcal 
clethine ever 
devised htj 
map, since it 
is an eKtensicn 
at aur centrai 
nervaus system. 
Beside it the 
ujheel is a 
mere huie-haapr 

-nierstiall mcLutian 



1 













Jobs are neglected. 

Friends and family fall 
away. Ultimately the 
computer becomes the 
central focus of their life. 

They give themselves to- 
tally over to its fascination 
and become un^ologetic 
Info Junkies, Computer 
Freaks, Techies, Hackers, 
whatever. 

Weiid. 

But the weirdest thing for 
me was that (until now) I hadn't 
the slightest glimmering of the 
experience they were having. Even 
from a distance though it was 
that, like the hero of Tron, these 
micronauts were really getting into 
their computers. A neuro-bionic re- 
lationship? 

My curiosity was aroused, but I 
knew this boy just wasn't equipped 
with the highly logical mental 
apparatus necessary to get on with 
even entry-level hacking. The whole 
thing seemed destined to remain 
another mystery of the Modem 
World. 

But with the Coming of the 
Macintosh, an updated, stream- 
lined variation of this rela- 
tionship was made available to 
everyone who would otherwise 
never have had the time, 
money, motivation, inclination, 
or brains to catch the wave. 

You know, THE REST OF US. 

The picture is considerably clear- 
er now: A computer can interact so 
delicately and precisely with the 
intellect that it reily does becomes an 
integral part of the cognitive pro- 
cess — ^something that no mere mech- 
anical contrivance could ever do be- 
fore. It communicates for you, to 
you, with you. 



It becomes you. 



55 






I is easy to see now how it could become 

I addictive. 

I I But there is a crucial difference between 

I I the Hacker and the nt'N. ..2iv..Macker. 

W' A Hacker/computer relationship is based 
on the manipulation of information, 
arcane puzzle solving, a love of penetrating and 
exploring the ration^, highly abstract inner logic of 
computers just for the intellectuaUy rigorous zing of it. 
On the other hand the Macker/computer relationship 
is a playful, even magical partnership estab- 
lished on the creation of images and 
patterns, on the joy of effortlessly 
manipulating them, on exploring 



their nonverbal, symbolic meanings. And finally, 
combining your images with words to change the way 
you think about communication...mayZie even the way 
you think! 

The way You think? 

The way You are. “Creative” or “Routine.” 

Two different oudooks, two different ways to be. 

Ok class, lets get organized. Make two columns in 
your notebooks: 

On one side is the Analytical, and it learns 
about d^gs by taking them apart. 

other is not so focused. 
t’s looking around at the 
larger patterns, the 




56 



...looks around at the larger patterns. 






wholes that are ^eater than the sum of their 
parts.Therefore it’s called, (all together now), 
Holistic. 

Analytical You thinks and communicates with 
thou^ts and words. 

Holistic You is happier with feelings and 
images. 

Analytical You deals with information in a 
serial manner, one bite at a time, in strict sequential 
manner. 

Holistic You is all over the place, sampling 
many different things, and often simultaneously. 

Analytical You makes decisions by the formal, 
rigid, explicit methods of logic. It traveis exclusively 
on the Goal-oriented Express. Holistic You is 
heavily into the informal, fluid, mysterious method 



of intuition. It gets about by strange and astounding- 
leaps. 

Analytical You is scrutinizing these statements 
for flaws in accuracy right now. Holistic You has 
already lost interest in the discussion. It’s — She’s 

(!)— probably ^ _ staring out the 

wondering 
we’re getting 
the 

v* picture. 

'i 



window, 
when 
on to 
next 







c PRODUCT) 













♦♦ OEATION 
SCREEN 



4 , 

♦^F^MCE PROJECTION ♦ 



APPLICATIONS 

DEVELOPMENT 

MODULE 




AERIALLY 
MOBILE 
LIFE FORM 



SELECTION 

MECHANISM 



^ ^ I RESEARCH MODULE 

Analytical You | ...teams about things by taking them apart. 











; 



W!m 



ELDING THE ONLY TOOLS AVAE 
ABLE AT THE TIME, CHINESE NEURO 
SCIENTISTS 



MAPPED OUT THE 
DYNAMICS , OF THIS PSYCHIC FLE/FLOP 
TWO MELENNIA AGO, AND FORMULATED 
THE WORLD'S FIRST BINARY OPERAHNG 

S ♦ Y • S ♦ T • E ♦ M 





...A SYSTEM SO ADVANCED 
IT'S STILL IN USE TODAY! 
THE MORE ADVANCED 
HACKERS OUT THERE ARE 
PROBABLY ON HANDSHAKE 
TERMS WITH IT ALREADY. 



ITS YIN & YANG. 




A BRIEF EXPLORATION INTO 
THE YDSr/YANG GESTALT 
WOULD OFFER US AN 
OPPORTUNITY TO BOTH 
ILLUMINATE THE SUBJECT 
AND DEMONSTRATE THE 
WIDELY DIFFERING MODES 
OF PERCEPTION EMPLOYED 
BY HOLISTIC YOU AND 
ANALYTICAL YOU. 



FIRST, LETS EXECUTE A 
BRISK ANALYTICAL SCAN 
OF THE YIN/YANG SPECIFI- 
CATIONS. 




Yin Yang 1/0 

Sophisticated 

Binary 

Integration System 




An extremely efficient multipurpose 
conceptual environment for multi-level 
comprehension and integrated management 
of all elemental phenomena. Encoded in 
CPrInM ™ (Cardinal Prindple Matrix ), a 
highly evolved non-linear natural language 
which templates all data in relation to the 
familiar Cardinal Principles, i.e., The Creative 
(— ) and The Receptivef — ), and their various 
subsets: The Formless / The Formed; The 
Light /The Dark; The Malejpaternal / The 
Femaie-maternd; Space / Time, ditto. 
YInYang 1/0 reconciles these opposing 
forces into a coherent whole. Benefits 
reportedly include: 



1 ."Bringing about a flowering of all things." 

2. "Restoring balance and harmony to the Universe 
and to the affairs of men." 

(Imbedded referencing to social conditions, 
interpersonal relationships and internal human 
development automatically maintain YinYang 1/0’s 
high interface with the Analog (real) World.) 

Rrst time operators of the YinYang 1/0 Binary 
Integration System 2 report an extraordinary 
Incidence of Primary Belief Revision, while even 
casual users consistently exhibit a marked 
decrease in stress. Increased networking 
capabilities with other carbon units, and an 
awakening of their proprietary higher natures. 



System Dynamics. 



Unlike the static duality of the more primitive 
electro-mechanical devices now in common 
use, the Binary Integration System does not 
assign Immutable values to the phenomena 
being analyzed. In defined, undefined and 
altogether random conditions of overload. 



both Yin (1 ) and Yang (0) flip into the opposite node. 
Neither is immutable; nothing is precisely — or 
only— what It seems. The Prime Constant is 
change. Obviously CPrInM™ is fully convergent 
with Reality Patterns now being confirmed on the 
outer edges of subatomic research. 



Features 



• User friendly. Exceptional visual / con- 
ceptual integration and a structurally 
transparent language encourages a high 
Intuitional penetration by operators. 

• Installed base. YinYang 1/ 0 is the de 
facto standard throughout much of the world. 
User groups have created a vast database of 
public domain documentation. 

• Reliability. The YinYang 1/ 0 System has 
been field-tested for over 4k years, earn-ing an 
unparalleled reputation for reliability. 

• SERM Compatible. Full handshake 
capabilities with the operating systems of ail 
Standard Esoteric Reality Models. 

• Open Architecture encourages unlimited 
enhancement of the basic system. Powerful 
applications exist in the fields of health. 



medicine, government, sexual reProgramming, 
martial arts and battlefield simulation. 

• Optional hardware includes the popular I 
Ching^, an interactive field plotting device. By 
directly connecting its digitally precise CPrinM ™ 
hexagramic progression with a randomized Unified 
Field Sensing routine, the I Chlng^ produces a 
marvelously subtle and accurate schematic of the 
interplay of opposing and complementary forces 
vectoring the life of the operator. The I Ching^ 
demonstrates a profoundly satisfying natural order 
where clarity and mystery can run concurrently. 

• Available software upgrades include fully 
optimized 1 .618 Top-down Analog Operating (TAO) 
source code. Duality escape function provides a true 
non-Euclidean data scan of all sensory inputs. 

(F)orm ■ (E)mptiness; (E)mptiness - (F)orm algo- 
rithms implemented exclusively. For qualified users 
only. 



60 






Right? 



Now a more holistic 
approach. Please 
observe the deeper 
philosophical det^s 
imbedded in this 
updated schematic 
of the Yin Yang main 
data register (next 
two pages). 



61 



Got 




Modem neuroscientists, wielding their 
tools of the analytical, verbal, logical (and 
sometimes surgical steel) variety, have 
discovered that the left half of the brain is 
home for all the pizazz and puffery of the 
Analytical, verbal, logical You, while the right 
hemisphere is the seat of the Holistic, imagistic, 
simultaneous, intuitive You. 





Kline, darling.") would be right h>rain turf; while filling out your 
1040 form is definitely a job for Lefty. Of course the class act is 
when they get it on together. (The "Union of Opposites.") 

Imagine young Einstein putting E=mc2 together. He's been 
pondering the connection between matter and energy for 
months. Maybe he gives up. Then, slowly, he develops a deep 
sense of the problem. It grows stronger; he can taste the rela- 
tionship. Not enough. Finally, he leaps the gap — and frames his 
feehngs in precise and elegant mathematics. Ah! Like 

music! Indeed, play- 

Duet. /" ing music is an- 



Words, rhythm: Left-Brain 
Melody, interpretation: Right-brain 




Other class 
act. 




64 



1. O Bi — modal Mio 





Needless to say. 
a perfect, fluid balance 
between modes 
Is an Ideal, one from which 
most of us have fallen away. 
Instead of weaving right and 
left, yin and yang activities 
Into a smooth Interaction, we 
get split out of balance, 
and Increasingly locked Into 
one way of looking 
at the world. 






From this perspective, 
"Get it Together" 
acquires a new & deeper 
meaning. 

Maybe we should say, 
"Get Bimodal!" 



Our Mac is a place to get 
bimodal: a lucid, logical 
realm that positively 
encourages us to loosen 
up, start taking risks, 

& stop making sense. 










Getting to speed 
you begin 

thinking with images. 









Real-time dreaming, someone called it: 
discovering the joy in letting go of mental rigidity and 
surrendering to an electronically engineered process of 
transformation. 

And the Macintosh is only the first of a new wave 
of fast, intuitive, intelligent computers. A journalist in 
Popular Computing m^e an interesting analogy. He 
said that if the gro\^ of personal computing could be 
likened to the early movie industry, then the Macintosh 
is like the first talkie. 

Like talking movies, the Mac may well have con- 
siderable social impact. Clearly its creators intend it to. 
In my investigations, one of the first things I picked up 
on was the legendary Apple aura. Programmed 
somewhere deep in its corporate counter culture origins 
is a powerful vision of the transformation of our 
civilization. 

A civilization that could probably do with 
a little transformation. 




Severed years ago, I met an old time Indian, a Mohawk. 




We?talkedabit 



'^.on the "general 



rs»** * • ••*?*" 



ift&tMiaffairs 












You know,” 

said he. 

This country 







PRO 



G 



R E 




UR MO 



S OMEHOW, EITHER THE 
compassionate, intui- 
tive, insightful (right) 
or the logical, scien- 
tific, conceptual, biocomputer 
Geft) side of our nature assumes 
command, then ridicules, per- 
secutes, and finally banishes the 
other. 

Cut off from the temper- 
ing influence of a partnership, 
the dominant one becomes a 
grotesque and dangerous carica- 
ture of itself. Doomed to excess, 
its victory will be haunted and 
eventually undone by the spectre 
of its underground counterpart 

‘The bigger the front, 
the bigger the back’* goes an old 
Taoist observation. 

Today, the aggressively 
technocratic priesthood of 
Normalpalhs holds sway 
throughout the land, endlessly 
praising the god Science, and 
preaching his revealed gospels 
of Efficiency, Progress and the 
Conquest of Nature. 

Yet even as we speak, 
the inevitable reaction unfolds. 
Erupting like smoke and shadow 
from the deeps of an angry 
earth, a new witch-haunted 
nation of MTV barbarians arises 
in our midst, consorts to a host 
of dark and wild gods. 

So it goes, back and 
forth. World out of balance. 

Despite the bland assur- 
ances of our leaders, a quick scan 
of the twentieth century reveals 
something is indeed terribly out 
of whack. Smell that L.A. air. 
Taste that Philadelphia water. 
Look for fish in our acid-dead 
lakes. Drive up the Mordor 
Extension of the New Jersey 
Turnpike: Hey everyone! We are 
living even now among pun- 
ishment and ruins. 

A dreary mechanical 
existence for the masses, an 
anarchic youth cult of rock *n 
roll voidoids, a poisoned en- 
vironmcnt...arc these the inevit- 
able trade-offs we have to endure 
to enjoy an advanced techno- 
logical consumer civilization? 



S T 












72 



M 



P O 



R T A N T 



PRODUCT 













73 




IS THERE A COSMIC PLAN BEHIND THE SlUCON REVOLUTION? ARE UNKNOWN FORCES GUIDING US ••••••; 

INTO A POST-INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONIC UTOPIA? IS THIS THE ULTIMATE HACKER-VISION? IS ‘ * i : 

SOME FUTURISTICALLY ARCANE PLOT GOING ON HERE? ’ * 



One of the original promises 



wsammmm 



of the computer era was that by facilitating access to 
information, by sorting, figuring, and filing it, me computer 
would rescue us from the holocaust of raw data that is 
threatening to overwhelm our civilization — thus (here's the 
vision) liberating a host of playful, imaginative right-brains to 
restore our collective balance. 

Oh yeah? 

A quick look around reveals that so far it hasn't gone 
down that way: Just where is this new legion of poets and 
healers? The New Wave? And why are there so many movies 
where the villain is a computer? 

Instead, computers seem to have drawn us into a new and 
lurid left-brain intoxication. Listen to the computerized 
mechanico-music creeping into even our Samrday morning 
cartoons. The march of the Technoids! 

Of course, there are a lot of secretaries who swear by their 
word processors, businessmen delighted with their 
spreadsheets, kids lost in their Zork Underground 
Empires — but in a culture already isolated from much of its 
own feelings, from its mysteries (Fig. 1)— have computers 
become part of the solution or part of the problem? Will MS- 
DOS (wMtever that is) lead us out of the desert? Or Unix to 
the promised land? Do they speak Fortran in Paradise? 

The problem is that right-brain functions cannot be 
measured by left-brain tools. And any culture whose prevailing 
mind-set is: if you can't measure or market it, it probably 
doesn't exist, will have a hard time accepting that right-brain 
activity is not just another block of information you learn and 
utilize, like Calculus, or how to use a spread sheet. Nor is this 
process an “artistic” skill like figure drawing. 

It can't be taught. 

It can only be caught 

It's a whole other way of being. In fact, it's the way we 
were as children, then gradually learned to ignore. It’s just a 
question of whether you can re-open the door. 

And now it turns out that the Macintosh is somehow able 
to help open that door, to stimulate the right brain creative- 
intuitive process. 

It offers a unique and beguiling environment to catch it, to 
exercise it, to reintegrate it with that linear, literal, minding-the- 
store A B C D world of the left hemisphere. 

And, as everybody should know by now, a clear working 
balance between the left and right hemispheres is the essential 
foundation for any real foray into personal evolution. 

Getting your act together. 

Which is the first step in getting the Big Act together, what 
is sometimes extravagantly known as Saving the World. 

Grand claims for a computer, no doubt. But then again — 
if there are those who have found heaven in a grain of sand, 
why not in a silicon chip? (Fig. 2) 



Fig.2 




76 









Fig. 1 (Cultural Mysteries) 














THE WORK PROCEEDED, 



I noted an interesting 
phenomenon. I 
wanted to do 
everything on the 
computer. Even simple 
tasks that a pencil 
could handle just as 
easily. Iwasreluaant 
to turn it off when I 
finished a day’s work. 
Hanging out and just 
macking around was 
much more interesting 
than whatever else was 
happening on life’s 
agenda. A charming 
state. 



In fact, a most 
curious state. And it 
showed no signs of 
flagging. 



Naturally I began 
to reflect. What in the 
world is going on here? 
There was an intensity to 
this attraction far beyond 
the natural delight one 
gets from a superbly 
crafted tool. 



Knc 



row how when 
you first fall in love you 
want to share everything? 
Same thing! 



80 



Whoa— W hat 

am I saying? 



Of course it 
wasn’t the same thing. 
But it was somehow 
connected. Only in this 
love story one’s beloved 
didn't have a heart of 
mld...the heart of one’s 
beloved was a lace of 
delicately programmed 
electric charges, and they 
were dancing eagerly to 
my every desire. 



We were definitely 
an Item. 



SPOOKY. 




As the affair 
continued, I attempted 
to disengage part of my 
consciousness from the 
heat of the moment and 
wimess it from a 
dispassionate space. 



VVe mostly 

know this process as 
Woody Allen’s ghostly 
double sliding out of 
bed and cooly 
watching his love- 
making with Annie 
Hall from across the 
room. But not to 
worry. That’s just the 
neurotic flip side of a 
valuable faculty: the 
objective observer, 
theWimess. 

It dawned on me 
that the computer had 
technologicjdly isolated 
and enhanced one par- 
ticular function of 
human intelligence — 
and now was feeding it 
back to me in a new 
and attractive package. 



Could it be that 

this symmetry between 
computer-mind and my 
mind was setting up a 
resonance — a subliminal 
attraction? 



Let us elaborate 
on this argument. And if 
our train of thought is a 
little Out There — well, 
look at it as a good 
excuse to drum up some 
interesting graphics. 



Of course, when 
you’re presenting any 
notion that’s philosophi- 
cally shaky, it’s always 
good policy to call upon a 
recognized authority. 
Therefore... wi7/ the 
esteemed French logician 
please take the stand? 



“Merci. 

Now then, is it not so that the basis of the human 
intellectual apparatus is our ability to make the 
simple distinctions? This or that, eh? Or, for ex- 
amples: 

I think I do not think 
I am <-> lam not 
I want I do not want 
Vanilla <-> Chocolate 
Vanilla plain Vanilla swirl 

...and so on, and et cetera. Le Binary Boogie. Is it 
onorisitoff! Comprenezvous? Oui?...Non?" 

~^y 



TECHNOBLISS. 




Then, in ways we 
have yet to fully un- 
derstand, the “intellect- 
ual apparatus” con- 
structs from this simple 
foundation that monu- 
mental edifice of ever- 
increasing complexity 
we call logical thought. 




Now since the 
little silicon brains of 
our computers are no- 
thing more than vastly 
complicated grids of 
microscopic on-off 
switches, this is their 
turf too. They go 
bananas, organizing, 
duplicating and 
elaborating these logic 
patterns to the point 
where a sizeable chunk 
of the world’s endeav- 
ors has been converted 
into unimaginably vast 
(but neat) arrays of 
binary code. >*md it can 
all be accessed and 
manipulated in 
microseconds. Wow! 
Order out of chaos! 



When the human 
intellect glimpses the 
razzle-dazzle perfection 
of its electronic counter- 
part, it just about loses it. 
“Awesome!” cry the 
synapses; “At last,” echo 
the neurons, “here is that 
precision we’ve but 
dreamt of! And the Law. 
Yea, here resides Know- 
ledge, Information, 
Harmony, Power, Data 
Control! More than a 
tOOl...AN ARTIFICIAL 
INTELLIGENCE.” 



Not only helping 
us along with our tasks, 
but cleansing all that icky 
analog fuzziness fi'om 
the murky reality system 
we’re stuck with... A 
MENTAL FLOSS, as it 
were. Log on! 



T echnobliss. 



Stimulating the 
brain by electron- 
ically SIMULATING 
the brain. 



Computer con- 
sciousness: When you 
get into it, it gets into 




83 





THERE IS INDEED 




A FEARFUL SYMMETRY AT WORK HERE 



85 








tJH 


problem 


Love...What? 


proposition A 


A careful 

examination of binary devices reveals 
that the computer is an idealized, upgraded version 
of one isolated element in our mind’s own 
primary operating system. 


proposition B 


A careful 

examination of this complex system reveals that one 
of the most deeply rooted of our ego algorithms is a 
curious propensity for devising new methods of looped, 
self-referential feedback.. .of admiring ourselves. 


conclusion 


Do you catch 

the drift? Could it be that what we have here is simply 
the so-called biocomputer mind fascinated by its own 
enhanced reflection? 

Why not? 

Let’s admit that beneath the ‘seductive fascination’ 

we may well find a secret thread of digital narcissism 

running through this whole relationship, 

i.e., the intellect hopelessly entranced 

by the well-packaged feedback of its 

own wonderful workings! 

Ergo, when a book 
(such as this) 

purports to be an enthusiastic exploration of a computer, 
what might we easily conclude is the 

real (if hidden) subject? 



Turn page for answer. 

87 




88 







, . NO ' ' 




GUESSED 

IT.* 

THE 

ALL-TIME 

FAVORITE 



HAS REARED 





ITS 

QLovc ty^HscuC) 

AGAIN! 



89 









“ME"? They 




Patience, 


said thia vaa 




Grasshopper ! 


a book about 




Where else is 


Zen. Typical! 




one to start? 




“Truly has it been said that this 




“More elusive is this ‘Me’ than the fabled 
wild ox, O honorable youth, and forever will it 
evade those who insist on concrete answers in 
all their studies. Yet what pursuit could pro- 
mise greater reward? Thus we in the Zen trade 



often adopt indirect methods in order to point the 
way. This being the case, let me say (since we are 
in a book about the Macintosh) that one who 
could search out and find MacPaint will have 
also grasped the tail of the mysterious 'Me.'” 





Long 

frustrated 
at every 
attempt to 
unlock the 
secrets of 
existence, 
the youthful 
pilgrim 
seizes upon 
the c[uest to 
find the 
mysterious 
MacPaint as 
his last 
hope . Alas ! 
wherever he 
goes, the 
name is met 
only with 
dumb stares . 
In 

desperation 
he vows to 
seek the aid 
of the 
legendary 
Eight 
Immortals . 
Ragged and 
hollow-eyed 
after years 
of 

wandering, 
he finally 
discovers 
the last of 
their number 
surviving 
high in the 
remote and 
craggy 

mountains of 
Koshu . 

Respectfully 
he salutes 
the 

venerable 
master . . . 





Yo Sensei! 



92 



(ZOOM BACK. . .) 






(ZOOM BACK. . . ) 



93 




t I i n .u.^ t .. UJ 

This is a computer, not a television. MacPaint is neither 
a computer nor a person — although it is said by some to 
have a personality. MacPaint is a program on the com- 
puter, and it is being used to create most of this book by 
a person. 



■ I T i 

Wrong. Pay heed and attend, O Impetuous One. A pro- 
gram is the sum total of an assortment of related features 
and capabilities that allow a computer to do something. 
In this case, create interesting visual images. 



— — -1^ t 

No. By themselves features and capabilities can’t do 
anything. Think of them more as a set of responses 
that a computer can give to stimuli from the outside 
world — in other words, to whoever’s using the computer. 



Hey, you got a little TV set up there! Neat! Is that 
MacPaint? 



■ ■■ I ■ — — - ■ ,■ • • T , 

So features and capabilities did all these pictures, 
like the one we’re in now? 



Program? Oh yeah, I see now. Like a TV show, right? 



(ZOOM BACK. . . ) 





. •/. *. ••.*. • •• V 




Ul.. ...... 4. . ... 



.* • .* • .*.• . .• .*.• •. .• .• . .• .*;• . • . • 

• • • • •• •/ . *.•:•* 

. *••.*.*. *•*.•.* •■.*- * * . .*.\**.*. * .\ 

•• V**’**’* 

: . *.*•; *./ 



* . *. •* • *. • *. •• . •• •• • * . 






■ . ;• .• • .• • . 
• . •• • . 



A pattern of energy sent from a disk temporarily 
sets up thousands of little on-off switches on the chip to 
create the responses. 


















Then the disk., jio, the pattern of energy must be the 
program! 






! : ! ; I*:v: >.•!*. I 






..... 

.... • : • : • v7*.‘- 

i • . • i.'i; i.* I : •r'<ry/y/y/y/ySysy/y,i‘^\'y, i ; • i. 

• . •.*. •: • *.*. *. .*• *.*. *.*• •.'• *.*• •.*• *.*• •.*. *.*• •.*• •.* *.*• •.*. •.*• *.*• *.*• *.*. *.*• *. • V • \ 

. . ... .*. . ^ .* > .•;« .•;• .•;• .•;• .*;• .*.• .•;« .•:.*> .* « .•; .*;• 
. • .*.•. V. •.* *.*. •.* *.*. *.* *.*• • •• *.*. •.*. *.*. •.*• *.*. •.*• •.*• •.*. *.*. •.'• *.*• *.*• •.* • *•*.•• *. « •.*. *. 

. % . . .* • .* • .•.* .* • .*.* .*,• .*.* .• • .*.• .*.• .*.• .*.• •• .* • .• . .* > 






■■ r: v". ... . 

••• ;, 7 .‘ lljI 



Well-yes and no; both and neither. It’s not so simple. 
For example, it is conceivable that some brilliant 
programmer might well have all the lines of MacPaint 
code memorized. (It really is just an aggregate of ideas.) 
Then it would be a very different pattern of energy inside 
his head. Or it could be written down on a piece of 
paper. But let us say that’s what it is: a particular pattern 
of energy. But only for the moment. 



For the moment! Waddya mean-it changes? 



• . • .•;• .*;• . .•;• r • 



' .• '7,. : ' : ’ 7 * * '* 



. .» . ... ... V. 



iir 




95 



(ZOOM BACK AND INVERT . . .) 





“It changes,” mutters the old man, 
“everything changes.” 

A silence. He speaks again. “Some 
say MacPaint was bom on Feb. 23rd, 
1984, and has been growing and upgrad- 
ing ever since. But MacPaint floated 
around long before then as a jumble of 
disconnected ideas. All MacPaint real- 
ly is then, is some possibilities 
that come into being when all these 
ideas are temporarily united by a minute 
energy field inside a more stable host 
device we call a computer.” 

Our pilgrim scratches his head. 
“Weird. The more you think about 
MacPaint, the less there is to think 
about. Kind of elusive. At least we 



know for sure what it can do.” 

“No!” growls the other, “Not at all. 
Patterns are made, pictures are drawn — 
things get done — but MacPaint itself is 
hardly the doen” 

“What?” 

“MacPaint is only an instrument. A 
tool.” 

The young man throws himself down 
on a rock in dismay. “Hey, everything 
seems turned around again. This is 
getting too tricky for me...” 

“Good! Good! What is day to the 
man of wisdom is night to the 
ignorant. Answer just one question 
now, and it should all become clear: 
who is this ME?” 



(ZOOM BACK, INVERT AGAIN. . .) 







“Call me Grasshopper.” 

The mysterious Immortal turns toward the young man for the 
first time, Ms dark and piercing eyes reflecting the ruddy glow of 
the setting sun. 

“Surely that is just one more name for Me, he says softly. “But 
what does it signify? What, precisely, is tMs Me?” 



(ZOOM BACK AGAIN. . .) 



97 











98 






99 







100 



canvas 
EMPTV mind 




102 



T 

JLhe^ 




le essential art of Zen is Sumi, 

Brush painting with ink on rice paper. It is 
wonderfully flexible, capable of both the most 
robust and delicate of forms. But what makes it 
most truly Zen is the clarity with which it 
conveys the mind of the painter. The first stroke 
is the final stroke; there are no touch-ups. 

The Zen painter approaches his art as a 
part of his practice, as contemplation: Canvas 
blank, mind empty. 

This art conveys the imity of Being and 
Action that leads to enlightenment. To freedom. 

The master Hogai was in his studio with 
some pupils. Qouds came up and it began to rain. 
The street outside was deserted, with not a single 
passerby. The master and his pupils fell silent, 
listening to the soimd of the downpour. A long 
time went by. Suddenly a man passed by the gate 
singing in loud voice. 

'There is an interesting man," said Hogai 
turning to his pupils. "Do you understand his 
frame of mind? If so, that is how you should 
paint!"' 

But we are here to explore the more binary 
possibilities: can a mouse and a cathode ray tube 



bamboo brush licking across 
rice paper? ^ Of course not. Still, MacPaint 
always has a few surprises up its sleeve. 

It doesn't t^e long to realize that no 
matter how much you play around with SPRAY 
PAINT, or doodle with pixels, as far as subtle 
shading and detail goes, the Mac will never 
equal a good old Mongol #2 ^/2 lead pendl. 

But the Mac is extremely precise. This is 
great for architecturcd drawings and crisp lay- 
outs, as well as hardedged new-wavy stuff. The 
latter is fine if you can take it. I can’t beyond a 
certain point. Too glossy and rigid and machine 
made...in other words, lifeless. (Is this its 
appeal? The sexiness of death?) 

Lots of designers are a good distance down 
that industrial highway cdready; let someone 
else go the extra kilometer with the Mac. 

The real challenge for me is to flirt with 
the flawless geometry (A) of computer graphics, 
while breathing some life (B) into them from a 
totally opposite direction... 

I always understood that the Union of 
Opposites ( O) is whatis really hap)pening on the 
cutting edge, anyway. 



103 




Therefore my first concern in the 
design of this book was to break up the 
geometric tyranny of the ‘computer graphic’ 
without forsaking the real virtues of the me- 
dium. This intention is mirrored in a para- 
dox. Zen culture abounds with tales of law- 
less and irascible masters, yet one of its most 
obvious elements is a deep respect for clarity 
and order-of things moving in proper 
grooves. ‘It is forbidden to leave your san- 
dals in disorder’ reads the signboard out- 
side a monastery. This sensibility permeates 
every asj>ect in the life of a monk — right 
eating, right sleeping, right meditating. But a 
rigid external framework fills a crucial func- 
tion, compressing and restraining the ten 
thousand impulses so that only die purest 
brand of spontaneity will finally burst forth. 

On the Macintosh, the invisible Cartes- 
ian GRID which underlays the screen (and 
your mindset) is an obvious parallel to this 
aU-permeating discipline. We must take care 
neither to get caught up in it, nor ignore it, 
but to use the graphics grid as a launching 
pad and backdrop for the curvilinear, the ran- 
dom, the cloud-hidden, the obscure. 

To this end, a few of the artistic 
strategies of Zen are admirably 

suited. 



On the Obscure: 






To see smoke beyond the mountain 
is to know there is a fire; 
to see a horn over the wall 
is to know there is an ox. 
— Chinese folk wisdom 

In a later age, this was called Cool 
Media: Laid back information that 
doesn’t leap out and grab you. It hints; 
you fill in the blanks, participate. 

Zen brush painting 
is a perfect example. 
Its simple blacks and greys create a 
puzzle for us to decode through 
heightened involvement. 
The unseen becomes as important 
as the seen; 
space around object as tangible as 
object itself. 

In space the creative imagination 
takes wings. 

If by nature our dot pattern is lower in 
information than other graphic 
techniques, why not move with it, 
exploit its potential for simplicity and 
understatement. 
Find the Too of the Macintosh: 
You don’t always have to say a lot 
to say a lot. 




107 



THIS! 

Calligraphy by Kokosai, 
grand master of the art of tea. 

(This! is the all-pervasive this: 
p^ect, free, actionless, ever-tranquil 
sunyaii or suchness.) 



On the 

Love of Original 
Materials 

Just as the state of Enhghtenment is 
not something acquired, but merely a 
returning to our Original Nature, so 
in the arts of Zen great value is 
placed on preserving Ae authenticity 
of whatever material and technique is 
used. Wood and chisel, paper and 
brush, clay and wheel — all should 
exhibit their original characteristics. 

Graphics executed on a bit-mapped/ 
dot-matrix screen will never be 
otherwise; they are what they is. A 
true MacGraphic stands unapol- 
ogetically on its dots, even goes on 
to capitalize on them. But any attempt 
to go beyond their limits wiU only be 
met by jeers and catcalls from the 
galleries. 

No doubt many of the works on 
these pages may be found wanting in 
this respect. But if I have produced 
some over-zealous failures, perhaps I 
may be excused. We — all of us now 
designing with the Macintosh — are 
pushing into a new visual frontier, 
defining the limits 
of our language only by 
exceeding them. 




WA^I ANJ> 5ABI AkE PkINClkLE5 CENTkM TO 
THE aE5THETI<;5 OP ZEN AN> PAkTICUIAkLY 
THE TEA CEkEMONY.^MOkMINALLY THE5E 
TEkM5 MEANT AN INEXPkE55IPLE. QUIET JOY 
HI1>MN PENEATH POYEkTY. A PkEAKIN<5 
WITH AkTIFICIALITY.« WHEkE THE 5PIkIT 
OF 5CIENCE WOULk LEAVE NO MY5TEkY UN- 
kAVELEk. WAPI ANk 5API WOULk QlUkT A 
FEEUN< OF OP5QIkITY ANk HKHEk PUkP05E. 
IMPEkFECTION PE<aiME5 A FOkM OF PEkFEC- 
TION. IN PkACTICE, AkTI5T5 5TkOVE TO 
CkEATE A kULl 5HEEN OP Ak<aiAI<; IMPEk- 
FECTION ANk INTIMATION5 OF VENEkAPlE Ok 
POETIC HIkkEN MEANIN<55. A kAKU TEA CUP. 
PLAIN A5 A 5T0NE: A THATOIEk HUT IN THE 
FOkE5T-5UCH THINC5 AkE AkMIkEk NOT 
ONLY FOk THEIk 5UPTLE 5IMPLICITY. PUT POk 
ALL THE A550CIATI0N5 THEY CAkkY OF A 
5PAkE. TIMELE55. INWAkkLY kICH AP- 
PkOACH TO UFE.^ WAPI ANk 5API 5TANk IN 
ALM05T TOTAL CONTkA5T TO THE 5LICK CON- 
VENTI0N5 OF MOkEkN COMPUTEk <JkAPHIC5. 
PkINCIN< THE5E 0PP05IN<5 0UTL00K5 TO<ETHEk 
WOULk PE A M05T kEWAkkIN<3 EXEkCI5E. 




no 



On 

The Heart of the Art of the Mac 




All the preceding discourse has been 
an exploration of the kind of graphic 
imagery most organic to the Mac and 
pleasing to the head and heart. Which is 
fine as far as it goes, but the real creative 
thumbprint of the Mac is 
found not in the creation 
of images, but in the 
. • manipulation of them. 

Image processing! This 
.. is a familiar dance to 
devotees of word 
• ■ processing, who already 
know how the unimpeded 
manipulation and re- 
■ . arrangement of words 
allows almost anyone to 

enter a whole new 

dimension of creative writing. 



It's the same thing here. Just as an author 
doesn't feel obliged to reinvent an alphabet 
from scratch, so the real business of the (if 
I may borrow the term) imagewriter isn't 
really to draw Images. 

Like letters, images are just the raw 
material. Grab them any way you can. 

Use clip art for a start. The ideal setup (I 
think) is a digitizer hooked up to a home 
video camera, like I have. Ora 
Thunderscan-whatever-even draw if you 
can. Or can’t. It’s sufficient just to 
doodle. Just get something on the screen. 
Anything. Then do things to it. Squeeze it, 
stretch it, chop it, flop it, outline, repeat; 
combine it with words, Mac It around until 
you have something that 
...says it. 



112 



ATYPICAL 

DOODLE. 





Let’s open by duplicating it and then FLIP HORIZONTAL. 




Hit TRACE EDGES a few times. 




Drop in a circle and trace again. It’s a Rorschach test. See anything? 





Let’s empty out those lumps now. What do we have? 




CLOUDS? 



II I I miiiQ]i]i 1 1 1 miDtiim i i ii 




114 




OK, if it’s clouds then we ought to do better ones. 
Just drop them in. 



CLOUDS 



]i I I I mii]g]iii 1 1 1 m[D[iim i i 1 1 




Now, all we need is a little more free associating on our theme. 





115 



ity 



But enough 
of this 
frivolity. 

Let us get 
down to 
some serious 
designing. 
These rough 
graphics are 
called 

‘thumbnails,’ 
little idea 
sketches that 
you quickly 
whip off to 
get a 

productive 
train of 
thought 
going. Here 
your speed 




116 




and 

flexibility, 
your power 
to duplicate 
and 

manipulate 
really pays 
off. 

Use it to do 
as many 
thumbnails as 
you can. And 
don’t stop at 
the first good 
idea. 







Always do a 
few more. 
You never 
know when a 
yet brighter 
spark may 
pop out of 
some final, 
dashed-off 
idea. 




When you’re 
finally 
satisfied that 
you’ve run 
your course, 
go back, pick 
up the one 
that seems to 
say it the 
best. 

And expand 
on it. 




A 

I liked this 
last one here. 




It can be a 
simple 
process of 
elimination 
to track 
down your 
final idea. 
Just keep 
copying the 
basic concept 
and put it 
through 
every 
possible 
permutation 
and 

refinement 
you can think 



of. 



Keep going 
until one 
finally 
dehvers the 
goods. 



Then do it 
up* 









‘Nothing 
can 

convince 

me 




iiiilii 




is nothing more 
than that which 
we call a game. 






-Hermann Hesse 










lllllllllll 


lillliil 






jjijjjiijjiiljiiijij 













4 



^ the moral: 

Tenacity 

of 

Purpose 



The study of Zen 
is like drilling wood 
to get fire. The wisest 
course is to forge 
straight ahead 
loithout stopping. If 
you pause at the first 
sign of heat, and then 
as soon as the first 
wisp of smoke arises, 
even though you go 
on drilling for years 



you will never see a 
spark of fire. My 
native place is close 
to the seashore, 
barely a hundred 
paces from the beach. 
Suppose a man from 
my village is 
concerned because he 
does not know the 
flavor of seawater, 
and wants to go and 
taste it for himself. If 
he turns back after 
only a few steps, or 
even if he retreats 



after having taken a 
hundred steps, in 
either case when will 
he ever know the 
ocean's salty, bitter 
taste? But, though a 
man comes from as 
far as the mountains 
ofKoshu,ifhegoes 
straight ahead 
zvithout stopping, 
within a few days he 
will reach the shore, 
and the moment he 
dips the tip of one 
finger into the sea 
and licks it, he will 
instantly know the 
taste of the waters of 
the distant oceans 
and the nearby seas, 
of the southern 
beaches and the 
northern shores, in 
fact, of all the sea 
water in the world. 

Haknin 

( 1686 - 1769 ) 



119 





Tnr 



™vCIAL 

^CTS 

Once you find the groove of 
IMAGEWRITING you^re ready 
for the exotic realm of Serious 
Special Effects. Start with a 
graphic as simple as a block of 
type and discover the amazing 
results a clever string of com- 
mands can produce. Or (next 
page) take a digitized picture 
and go straight for the bizarro 
zone. But careful! 






lENSE OF POWER 
BE INTOXICATING 

It’s not hard to get too far out and wind up with a mess: All effects and nothing special. 





ON THE 

SERENDIPITOUS 

> 

0 

0 

D 

m 

Z 



May I bring your attention to the graphic on 
the left (Before), once destined to be a chapter 
heading. In its final polish, I went to erase an 
unwanted squiggle in the flower with a kiss from 
the paintbucket dipped in white. Alas, the 
squiggle was touching a line, the line touched a 
border, and the border a large block of pattern. 
Surprise! In a flash a whole section of the picture 
disappeared! (After) 

In these situations, of course, one praises God 
and hits the Undo, returning everytfiing to the 
moment before the crime. But wait, thought I. Let 
us take another look at that mistake. 

Before was OK, no doubt, but this After was 
a fre^ stroke. It conveyed a sense of the 
unexpected. It was pretty good. 

And it was something I never would have 
thought of doing, particularly having so carefully 
filled in the missing portion. 

Another Zen Story: 




(before;) 



122 





A friend of the famous tea master Rifyu 
wished to impress him. He purchased a beautiful 
and costly ceramic tray for the ceremony and 
invited Rikyu to tea. The tray did not elicit any 
comment from the master. The owner was so 
downhearted afterwards that he threw down the 
tray, breaking it into many pieces. A friend of the 
owner later collected the pieces and cemented them 
together so that the cracks became a design of fine 
gold lines. 

In time the friend thought to invite Rikyu to 
tea and use the tray again. 

Rikyu’ s keen eye at once detected the old 
caddy. 

“Fine,” he said, “Surprising! How truly now 
this tray reflects the spirit of Zen!" 

Surprising. 



123 



Righto. While in theory there is absolutely 
nothing unpredictable in the way the Mac executes 
its artistic labors, in real life, as we saw, it takes 
no more than a truant pixel to send things skidding 
off the road— and into the Zen of the Con- 
trolled Accident 

Or, as Ornette Coleman, or somebody, said, 
“Jazz is just riffing on your mistakes.” 

Learning to riff on random input can 
endow not only your ^phics with a new life, but 
your life with a new dimension. It’s a skill central 
to the creative process and to awareness. 

I first became aware of its possibilities some 
years ago. I was still in high school and working 
as apprentice to a Hungarian designer named Eva 
Zeisel. Nothing got taken for granted around Eva. 
The most commonplace things — a dead leaf, a 
dishrack, a clothespin — anything could suddenly 
become the subject of analysis and delight. Even 
the English language yielded hidden nuances of 
meaning when she rearranged it in her Central 
European accent. She had, I believe, an unspoken 
certamty that each moment and everything it 
contained was important. Once this convic- 
tion is established, it’s a simple matter to discover 
how and why. 

In retrospect I realize there was a bona fide 
transmission happening, but at the time I just 
thought it was really fun to hang around this 
intense woman, explore her huge house, and 
watch how she played out life’s drama with such 
unusual, dashing strokes. 

I remember the morning she had a major 
presentation of a dinnerware setting to a large 
corporation. Eva was wavering between two final 
choices. A rattle at the kitchen door. Who was it? 
A neighbor, or perhaps the trash man, I don’t re- 
member — it didn’t matter. Up she jumped and 
dragged him over to the two plates. 

“Which one do you like the best?” she 
demanded. (The most unportant design judgment 
of the week.) 

“Huh? The plates? Uh...that one.” 

“Of course! Ah, but you are a genius! That’s 
the one then, pack it up, let’s go.” 

Or another day, a ruined silkscreen, left 
uncleaned and partially clogged, would be 
snatched from the iunkheap, held up to the light. 
Aha! we must make some prints from this one. 
The result might well be a mess — or fiddled with 
in the right way, develop into a whole new line of 
decorations. 

We grow up, the cement sets, and we become 



124 



"In retrospect I realize 
there was a bona fide 

transmission happening." 



"...Tuning in to potentially 
meaningful information 
winging in from all quarters." 



a closed operating system, programmed with a 
limited but comfortable set of notions. We respond 
to this inertia by becoming curators in our own 
musty archaeological museum, endlessly polishing 
and cataloguing our precious psychic artifacts, re- 
arranging mem into new exhibits. 

Meanwhile, while we’re rummaging around 
the warehouse, outside, that whole other 
thing keeps right on happening: each instant 
always new, reborn, surprising, fresh. 

The universe is indeed spectacularly uncon- 
trolled, spontaneous, and full of accidents. But har- 
monzing with this and giving expression to it is 
not as simple as slopping pauit across canvas or 
generating “music” from random numbers. The 
accidental is always seen in relation to what is 
ordered and controlled: “The Dark Yin is never 
wimout the Bright Yang.” 

The MacPaint program, once you get to speed 
in it, becomes a microcosm of this arrangement, 
providing both an “ordered and control- 
led” environment — and a constant supply 
of unexpected graphic surprises within it. 
We can undo mem, to our diminishment, or en- 
cour^e me flow and pan for the gold. 

There is a great learning here. For many it’s a 
whole new world, not only of finding pertinent 
mistakes on the computer, but tuning in to poten- 
tially meaningful information winging in from all 
quarters. 

Wim practice, a part of our active intelligence 
gets permanently allocated to quickly scanning all 
unexpected and accidental data right on me fly, 
rendering a brief yes/no/maybe assessment and 
moving on. 

To program an open channel to randomized in- 
put like mis, at least a handshake acceptance wim 
synchronicity is neccessary. Syncmonicity is 
the original unified field meoiy of events; an un- 
derstanding mat at every instant an underlying, in- 
visible interconnectedness runs through every- 
thing around us. Everything is on cue. “Co- 
incidences” are merely glimpses into how it is all 
me time, if we only had eyes to see. Tune into syn- 
chronicity and everyming is potentially grist for 
me mill. 

Well not everyming...there’s still a lot of chaff 
mat blows by too. A proper synchronicity 
scanning subroutine needs a well-tuned 
Relevancy Filter. Opened too wide, and your 
origmal goals are soon obscured by me beauty of a 
million interesting alternate possibilities. 
Everything is relevant, but noming gets done. 
Save mis mode for me weekends. 

But squeeze me filter level down so low that 
no accidental input seems relevant and you’re right 
back where you started. Ho hum. 



126 




Back to the Mac. 

I touched up After here and there to bring out the offbeat feel- 
ing & saved. Having an electronic artistic collaborator given 
to the unexpected has definite virtues if you play it right. • 



127 



EPILOGUE 



Alas, the more I looked at After the more I knew 
Before was really better suited for what I had in 
mind. Sometimes a graphic should simply be compe- 
tent and simple, like punctuation that gets you from 
here to there. More defeats its purpose. 

So what to do with my happy mistake? What if 
the two pieces were side by side? 

I set them out on facing pages, and an altogether 
new entity was begotten: Bgore and After together. 
How obvious. 

They could illustrate...yes, A discourse on 
Serendipitous Accidents! 



CONCLUSION 



Corral 

wandering thoughts. 

Drop anxiety. 

Bring an extraordinary 
attention 

to ordinary circumstances. 
Perfect joy I 




Gensha was asked 

how to enter 

(he path 

of the Buddha 

**Do you hear the sound 

cf that stream?” He said. 

"Yes...” 

"There is the way to enter!” 




ON THE R 
O 

ON THE R 
O 

ON THE R 
O 

ON THE R 
O 

ON THE R 
O 



LENTLESS FASCINATION 
THE COMPUTER 
LENTLESS FASCINATION 
THE COMPUTER 
LENTLESS FASCINATION 
THE COMPUTER 
LENTLESS FASCINATION 
THE COMPUTER 
LENTLESS FASCINATION 
THE COMPUTER 








132 




Here’s the typical scene; The end of another day in the studio. I’ve been finishing 
up a page for hours now, nudging FATBITS endlessly around in pursuit of the elu- 
sive splendor of pixel perfection. Must be late. Wasn’t that the last call for din- 
ner? I really should go in before the food gets cold. What time is it, anyway? 




Who3/ Midnight? I've been working 
since seven o 'dock ibis morningi 





133 





nly when I lurch clumsily against the studio doorway do I awaken to 
the fact that I’ve about totally lost touch with my body-consciousness. I am 
buzzzzzzzzzzzed out. Time for a quick inventory. 

Breathing: Shallow. Neck and back: Stiff. Head: How long has this head- 
ache been there? It’s deep in, lurking right on the edge of perception.. .like a 60- 
cycle fluorescent light hum. 

A quick meal and to bed. Sally is sound asleep. I’m bushed, but I feel like 
I’ve just had two cups of black coffee laced with silicon. I lie there for hours 
listening to loose binary static hiss through my neurons. 

I’ve been digitized, that’s what! 

Please note: There are two sides to the Macintosh relationship: 




134 




135 




The light-hearted dance of discovery had turned into a lock- 
stepped technoidal Tango, with me a willing, tranced-out partner. 



I think I’ve been had. 
Digitized, systematiz- 
ed and hypnotized. 
Here is the routine: 




Besides-it 
is A KIND 
OF HIGH! 





As each workday begins, my attention is 
quickly drawn into a single-pointed focus 
on the computer. Early warning signals 
fly by unheeded. Matters deteriorate. By 
midday I have turned to a full blown and 
relentless pursuit of The Perfect Page. 



Perfection! Now that’s some- 
thing to get behind! Certainly 
more important than eating 
regularly, or a full night’s 
sleep, or health, or family, 
more important than... 



But hey, why 
PI worry about that 
^1 nowf We’re on a 
roll! We’re ready 



Anything? 



to score! 




\ N 






^ / owever, if this state is 
gratifying, 
it’s not very gracious. 
It may be focused 
but it’s sure not expansive. 
Brilliant... but not loving. 

Too much geometry 
and too little chemistry. 

I was another careless 
victim of... 



138 






SOONER OR LATER ANYONE DOING 
CREATIVE WORK WITH A COMPU- 
TER WILL DISCOVER THIS TEN- 
ACIOUS PULL BACK TOWARDS THE 
OBSESSIVE PERFECTION OF THE 

ANALYTICAL GRID 









reativity, like love, requires a soft focus; an ongoing flirt- 
ation with the unknown and the irrational; a state of mind open to the 
serendipitous accident or the unexpected flight of fancy that can come 
along and lift you right out of the everyday. 




'• I. 
s 



** V|*'« V 

• • ^ •;+:■ Ssii/ ... 

• 1 \ 
f ' • V -.'v i 








B 



ut the operating 
environment on 
any computer — even the bless'd 
Macintosh— is binary and cri^, with 
an implicit understanding that 
everything if carefully scmtinized is 
idtimately black or white. No in- 
betweens, no grey areas, nothing 
mysterious or soft focused. “The 
important thing,” McLuhan once 
warned, “is to realize that electronic 
information systems are live 
environments in the full organic sense. 

They alter our feelings and 
sensibilities...” 
Indeed? Sign^icantly, the digital 
undertow was altering my feelings and 
sensibilities most drastically in the 
Fatbits environment. With all creative 
decisions reduced to ON or OFF, the 
allure of achieving Ultimate Order 
& Perfection became so strong that I 
eagerly compressed this vast and 
inexplicable human consciousness 
down to the level of shifting little black 
squares around a lununous screen 
...for hours each day. A tour-de- 
force of technological mesmerism! 

How is it done? 

By Electronically Induced 
Dyslexia? Could be. Maybe certain 
computers excite left-brain circuits 
enou^ to create the illusion of right 
hemisphere open-energy-flow activity. 

Why not? 

And if in the process genuine 
inspiration gets replaced by facile 
cleverness...who cares? This is not the 
time for hair splitting: 
Fire up that hard disk and 
full speed ahead! 




9\(pt 'uHtfwut reason Has tHe 9r(ac Been caCBed 

skis for the 




...it puts you on the fast track. 



143 






LIFE ON THE LEADING EDGE 




True enough. But there's no arguing with success 
these days, right? 

Wrong! We don’t have anything against success 
...but you needn’t be a prophet to spot yet another 
golden calf here. All you need is a brain which starts 
to fry when it finds itself accumulating too many 
mental speeding tickets. 

Time for serious reflection. 

If you step back a pace or two and get a wider 
perspective, it appears that what can occur here is the 
perennial obsession with surface activity that 
can distract us from the heart of life. This is the 
domain of calculative thinking, and it’s perliaps 
the most dangerous quality of our secular age. 

Calculative thinking is not only the process that 
has transformed our world through the empirical 
sciences, but characterizes any thinking process that 
plans to organize, manipulate and dominate situations. 
Even artistic situations. 



Shaman 



of the Board 



Of course! The fast track. At last I see what’s been going on. 
I’ve been initiated by the Mac into the fraternity of the young and the 
restless. It all checks out: self-motivated and ambitious; aflame with 
visions of exponential growth and overnight success; long hours and 
six-day weeks; no extra time for other interests. And enough 
leading-edge tingle in the corridors to sweep my com- 
mon sense reservations under the rug. Of course I don’t see 
my wife and kid anymore, but — uh — ^I’m sure I could still recognise 
them... 

Yup: The whole enchilada. 

Lots of people really thrive in this condition. Indeed, Apple 
Founder and former Sharnan of the Board Steve Jobs believed this is^ 
the way his development teams work best; that they’re artists. 
“Look at the way artists work,” he explained once, “they’re not 
typically the most ’balanced’ people in the world.” 




I Not Typically the 

Most Balanced *• 



“It is the greatest challenge of our time to recognize calculative 
thinking and be aware of both its limitations and its power to 
completely absorb our energy and attention.” 



But what about this exploration of the mysterious 
bionic relationship between man and chip? Pretty 
important, that? 

SURFACE ACTIVITY. 

OK, then what about the business of opening up 
right-brain functions...Saving the World, and so on? 
Surface activity? 

Maybe. 

Without disparaging the ability of calculative 
thinking to order our world, even make it beautiful, it 
is the greatest challenge of our time to recognize it, and 
be aware both of its limitations and its power to 
completely absorb our energy and attention. 

Calcdative thinking, with all its apparent 
practicality, becomes an abstraction, cut off from its 
roots. It develops technologies that possess 
manipulative powers and offer an illusory sense of 
tangibility but can never truly nourish 
humanity. Calculative thinking — thinking confined 
to its own surface — can never genuinely alleviate 
human problems unless it is integrated with a deeper 
level of thinking. 

Surface, calculative thinking only 
obscures our intrinsic harmony. 

It is grounded in the principle of splitting 
and dividing all things as a means 
of analysis and COTCrol. By the limits 
of its own nature it can never truly 
grasp any profound underlying 
unity, but often p’etends to through 
platitudes such as “We’re all one.” 

Yet the fact that we often find 
a peaceful strength in someone 
who has mastered some aspect 
of calculative thinking: musician, 
mechanic, potter, mathematician... 





TMs separatum is a symptom of spiritual 
disharmony to which human heinys have 
always Been suBject, But perhaps more 
intensely so in this secular and techno- 
logical age. The healing cf this disharmony 
Between calculation and contemplation is 
the process of ‘Enlightenment, which reveals 
the essence of all thinking as an unBroken 
stream of pure consciousness. ‘This process 
is not for a few 2len masters, or saints, or 
"mystics ’ -But for everyone. 



THE REST OF US 




1010 0101001 1010 10011 0101 100101 0111000111 0100 



“The future masters of 
technology will have to be 
lighthearted and intelligent. 
The machine easily masters 
the dumb and the grim.” 



1001 001 011010 




On the other hand I might well be at the point of no return 





in a genuine technological rite of passage. 

Rites of passage are usually characterized by a series of trials. For instance... 



Eye aecs. ihcrcfoie eye am? 



.. 




TRIAL I 







O C5> 




The Stony Curse of Sensory 
Exile. Staring at a cathode ray tube 
for hours every day can really throw 
off the natural balance of your sensory 
input. One becomes all sight. Internal 
processing gets all skewed out. The 
neurological consequences of this are 
hard to prove but easy to feel: Jagged. 
Totally externalized. Consider how th^ 
sense of sight emphasizes the sep- 
ar-ate-ness of things — as opposed 
for instance to the all-enveloping 
continuums of hearing or smelling. 



~ .'A J ^ 

• 



■A'KVf':; . 

:-%Vov, 







not to fall be- 
hind the frothy leading edge of The 



High Technology Wave: 

Hardly do I have the flashy new Mac 



Turbo II in my hands when the 
QuickDo ProtoZoom is released, Wl, 
new industry standards” | 
"■ _ ^ — and renderine mv Turbo II ^ 



■ ^ ^—<tnd rendering my Turbo II 

p _ • hopelessly obsolete. But snag- p 

»*.“ ■ ging a review copy is only half the 
■" battle. Next we confront , 



\ \ ' 



153 




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Solving The Documentation Mysteries. 

Now it can be told: Odds are excellent that the manual of 
instruction accompanying any new equipment or soft- 
ware will be the creation of a secret computer 
priesthood. Following the time-honored traditions of 
their craft, the real objective of these Silicon Illuminati is 
not, of course, to actually inform us about the instal- 
lation and use of the product in question, but to make us 
feel childlike or stupid — and by extension, in awe of 
their rarefied and arcane knowledge. 

How is this done? No one knows for sure. Perhaps the 
handbooks are conceived in a parcel dimension where 
the language only looks like English. Or are unknown 
meanings assigned to words on a random basis? What- 
ever the method, the results are brilliant. No further than 
the fourth page, the line of reasoning wUl have im- 
perceptibly slipped from my grasp, evenmally defying 
even multiple readings. 



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Curiously, trial and error usually reveal that installation 
and use are actually quite simple. Things are looking 
good, you’re getting up to speed again... 

I then, without any warning 



Tk^L V 



Surviving The Mysterious Glitch. 

Why in the Name of Venture Capital won’t PageMaker 
print through the Imagewriter? Where did the new fonts 
go? Why does a cute little bomb keep wiping out the 
MacPaint upgrade screen whenever Switcher is 
running? 

The wheels of industry grind to a halt while we pick 
through the system searching for the fatal flaw; hours 



technology 

industry, and all its parts are a bit gawky — st^ 
undergoing spurts of growth and change, constantly in 
motion, updating each other and falling in and out of 
compatability. 



155 






Of course, no Passage is devoid of unexpected moments of grace: 




MYSTERIOUSLY 



after many a foiled attempt to get a new 
system going smoothly, I sometimes walk 
through a routine that didn’t work before — 
mA...What? Now everHhing works fine! 
But of course. The Randomly Gener- 
ated Blessing has come and gone. 

I suppose this should be comforting, like 
when Han Solo gives the control panel of 
the Millenium Falcon a good whack, and the 
recalcitrant spaceship leaps into li^tspeed: 
shucks, even this high technology is kinda 
human after all! 

But it’s not comforting. I can’t get over the 
notion that computers should have a certain 
implacable perfection about them. If some- 
thing goes awry — well then it should stay 
awry until properly remedied according to 
the book. 

Eventually, and by means never fully under- 
stood, the new additions are online and the 
whole system running happily. 




156 





157 







hurry O 






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hurry 













hurry 



hi/mi ^ M 

hurry" ^^^rry hurry » 

hurry HUfM 

hmy toy /K/nf 

my J™ 






*M"y hurry 

hurry 



VM 












THAT OLD T/ME REUGION 

Some time ago however. The Heaviest Factor 
slipped into my studio from her domains in the Outer 
Darkness. Unnoticed, she slowly grew to awesome 
proportions. Now she is out of the closet, an estab- 
lished presence, shamelessly droning her harsh incan- 
tation over my shoulder. It’s that ancient one, old 
serpent MahakaJa herself, Devourer of the 
Dancing Moment, premier deity of the old Time 
Religion, promulgator of its triple sacraments: Impa- 
tience, Anxiety, Haste. 
Huny hurry himy! I can’t seem to shake the 
feeling, even when I remind myself hey, there’s plenty 
of time. In the car I’m always driving faster than 
necessary. Like the White Rabbit, always late. No. 

Always /gg/ing late. 
So why the hurry? 
There’s an odd combination of sp^ and stasis 
built into computers, and once you’ve successfully 
merged with the chip... it do strange things 
to yo’ twad. One minute you’re cruising at warp 
speed doing all this instantaneous rightSttdf — then 
Clunk! the system dumps you on hold while it 
glacially performs some piece of internal 
business. And your mind dumbly freezes up right 
along with the screen. Perhaps only a hant^ul 
of seconds tick by — ^but it seems as if your 
.biturbo Macintosh Spl. has just stalled in the pits 
at the Indianapolis 500, and as your precious 
lead dissolves, the pit crew just amble over to 
see what’s wrong. Hey! Let's go! 

Hurry hurry hurry! 

One merges with the chip; one gains 
extraordinary control over a miniature 
universe. But the itrfluence flows both ways. 
One's brainwaves are synchronized now at a hyper- 
steady 7.4 megahertz. One lusts for 20 virgin mega- 
bytes of mass storage. One’s far horizons are the four 
crisp edges of a cathode ray tube. The computer 
becomes one’s life. A tad limited, no? But, eyes 
a-gleam, one is still into it! We see and obey... 
To finish this journey in good style, yea even in 
acceptable mental health, I will have to steer my w^ 
clear of this labyrinth and get on True Course again. 










B.wava^ 




THERE MUST 
J BE SOME 
^ WAY 

OUTTA 
HERE.. 



A path can always 
be found out of even 
the most oppressive 
or addictive... 



predicament 



Ultimately, a clear. 



SUUfiUfi 



<— direction 



It’s just a matter 
of getting the high 
er perspective... 



emerges, simple in fact, though less two-dimensional; a middle 



the T subtle 
art of nick- 
ing through 
cracks in... 



to discern an abiding path 
of life from all the dead 
enders. Naturally, events 
take on a more mythic per- 
spective, with its keener 
vision, fresh insights and 
new responses. 



^ reversals 
EJ when nee- 
^ essary... 



such as the flexibility to make...— » 



I 




n ^ 


p. — a 





1 







160 




ON RATS & RITES OE, 
PASSAGE 




The difference between men and rats, it 
has been observed, is that while we both 
have the ability to find the cheese in our 
respective mazes, when the cheese is 
gone, the rat will only return to the spot 
three more times at most. Men, on the 
other hand, keep returning to the same 
spot for the rest of their lives! 

For a while there, the Macintosh exper- 
ience had been the Great Cheese. Like 
any sleepwalker in the throes of a new 
romance, I had projected onto the 
relationship the fanciful hopes and false 
expectations which always lay the foun- 
dation for a good bringdown. 

Sleepwalker? Sure. Truth is, we roll 
through life on automatic pilot, asleep at 
the wheel, more or less oblivious of 
what’s really going on — of what’s really 
Real. Mostly we get away with it. 

This is variously called Everyday Life, 
Business as Usual, The Great Ameri- 
can Dream. 

But through the modem magic of 
electronic brain stimulation, I found 
myself getting strung out everytime I 
nodded off at the wheel of the Mac. 



The computer’s velocity and dynamics 
raised the stakes by amplifying my state. 
Win big, lose big. Time and again, I 
have been drawn into the rose gardens 
of digital delight, only to find myself 
snared at day’s end in a briar patch of 
thorny obsession. Samsara. The whole 
venture certainly addresses some cmcial 
area where I am all too willing to let go 
of the helm. 




1 I I I I . 

1 I I I • 

Rites of passage are built around a crisis 
that forces a closer look at the essentials 
of our life. But since our modem times 



162 




lack the appropriate Homeric pageantry, 
passages must surface in unlikely sur- 
roundings and are difficult to spot. If 
you catch the wave though, hold on! 
One should come out the other end not 
only older, but wiser. Recognition of the 
rocess, and where you’re at in it is the 
ey to staying the course to a successful 
conclusion. 



A little calculation reveals my position 
is in the crucial bottleneck stage. The 
sirens of fascination beckon on the 
right, while to the left loom jagged 
hassles and obsessions. 

Artful means will be necessary to see 
this thing through to a graceful conclu- 
sion. 



Atlraction 
Fascination 
Obsession 
n- Hassle 




FIG. 29.3 CRUCIAL BOTTLENECK 



163 




In the arts of Zen, form is 
invariably balanced with 
emptiness — ^not just unfilled 
background, but a living 
emptiness intrinsic to the 
dynamics of the work. 



The same holds with 
computer software. When a 
program is loaded into the 
Mac, it needs plenty of 
imusedfc 
— emptiness — 
left in memory to "move 
around in." If it's not 
available, any operation 
more complicated than 
dotting an i, can draw this 
terse little haiku: 



164 




Shucks, y«vtfn. 



ccnain 



Not enough work space indeed! 



and not just the 
^^MlBve led up to this. 

HRce, there's an unnerving kind of hassle awH 
BFmost of the new equipment and software • I’veJ^ 
One must insure that when this book debuts it will be rij 
ing edge of the Ji^gh ^hnolop' wave.) First, it's ev 



^^Hpid, as if i W.:SUa^*mlo*a sphere the prs^H 

^ME^e is contriY^d to look cxacUOrke' has uri^H 
Hfnings assigp^’to wo|k oila^SB^ Asi expositioi^J^H 

p)ping froiT).y^* grasp, it AnA.MlWi (^<|tsoning I arri^l 

fcnsc to com^Dfi^hd. ‘ I mf 1 # 

K And th^right off I sow niJ^^Rus ^IclWirises to *^vent the wh '(3 
few conflg^gtron from working smoothly right off: Wfiy/^Jp, the 
Venture Cq^aI won't Pagem^r print through the Im^c^riter? 
fiappened t(^^t. new fonts? Why do Wkeep getting a, cute iiiile bomb on thj 
MacPaint uj^j^ screen now? Whcl days arc lost whifq-I;-pick through^ 
jyslenftor w^{^ently on tied-up factor 1 support telephone liite^ *>. < 



mes all too awgre maians is me jecn^oiogy*^ an aaoiesct^ 

arts^of 3ren5 form^^8-friv^lably\^^^ 

I each otha^^£j|ill f compatibj^^ 



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The book had filled up all the files in my head. 



166 






Have I been kicking around the parallel ports that 
long? Apparently. The symptoms were certainly 
writ large: work slowdown, inspiration crashes... 
the hiss of static electricity in my brain at night... 



Not enough work space. No wonder I felt a sense 
of oppression. I could blame it on the hardware, 
on the software, on the very digital underpinnings 
of computerdom. ..if I tried hard enough I could 
probably drag the entire military industrial com- 
plex into the hearing — but wait! Who’s really in 
charge here? The simple fact was that there is no 
one else to blame. / had filled up all my files. 



If the situation has arisen because of what I hath 
done, then responsibility to UNDO was mine too. 
The irony did not escape me that this overcrowd- 
ing is ^1 taking place in a book promising 
a look into Zen, and by extension, into emptiness. 



Getting it on with Emptiness. 



A first step in clearing out the head is some 
serious reflection on the matter of clearing out the 
head. And while merely talking “emptiness” is 
generally frowned upon in the Zen trades, a little 
running on about it has some value — it starts a 
synchronizing of one’s mental algorithms with an 
elegant new Source Code. In other words, let us 
seriously consider the possibility that a shift of 
our center of gravity away from all the stuff 
happening around us can radically lighten one’s 
baggage, clear one’s mind, and open the heart. 



The Graphic Safari has arrived at an interesting 
about-face. First came an account of getting into 
digital territory, and now, cutting our way out! 



167 



Advice from Aikido master to friend starting business: 



“CLEAN SPIRIT... 










A Sword Story 



SHARP SWORD. 



'^^^KASAKI MASAMURA was 
the greatest swordsmith of ancient 
Japan. Not only was he famed ^ 
as a master of the art, but 
as a man of inspiring 
moral stature So 

as great was 

his intensity of 
^^^^M^^pirit, it is said, that when 
he forged a sword, something 
of his own nature would pass into it. 



His ablest disciple Muramasa was 
reputed to have exceeded him 
in the keeness of his blades, 
however. ‘ ^ 



iin thp ^ 



A samurai, wishing to ascertain the ^ 
finer edge, placed a Muramasa sword 
in a flowing stream. Every fallen leaf 
that floated down and met the blade 
was cut in two. He did the same with 
a sword of Okasaki. 



To his surprise, the floatmg 
leaves avoided the blade. 



All right, here’s the sharpest sword of all 




170 






Does that compute? Of course, if you’re not 
comfortable with the plot-line of “Everything is 
Perfect,” there is a far more popular back-up 
scenario available. And if the going gets a little 
heavy at times, remember, it may beaB movie, 

but at least it’s reliable. 



C BACK-UP SCENARIO) 



Join the ranks of the 
aked Ape! Ponder your 
way through a random 
and quite often meaning- 
less universe. Rise or fall 
with every roll of the 
dice! -Or, fight the good 
fight to maintain your in- 
tegrity and get a piece of 
the action too. In The 
End, against such un- 
known odds, who knows 
what to expect? But 
what didja expect, 
anyway? Chin up 
pal! This is the 
Real 
World. 



171 




BUT WILL IT PLAY IN PEORIA? 



It’s tempting to buy the “Everything is 
Perfect” script, but seems risky too. How can 
you be certain it’s not just wishful thinking? 

Will it play in Peoria? 

No way. Under the pitiless scrutiny of 
everyday rationality, “Everything’s Perfect” 
folds after one show. “Un-be-lieve-able,” 
chorus the critics. “God is in His heaven, but 
All is decidedly not that well on planet 
Earth.” 

Hold on now. Remember that one varia- 
tion or another of this understanding is 
central to all sacred traditions. The least we 
can do is look at it again with fresh eyes. 

If we do, we discover a new variation of 
the Theory of Relativity: both of these sce- 
narios are true. 



Obviously the “Real World” script tells it 
like it is. (The evidence is undeniable.) We 
are stuck in a patently unjust and suffering 
world run by loony dinosaurs whose ignorant 
armies clash nightly (between ads) on the six 
o’clock news. Occasional flashes of beauty 
illumine the scene, of course — to be over- 
shadowed, if present trends continue, by 
some nuclear flashes. 

Everything’s Perfect? 

Come off it! 

We’re talking 

real world. 

A Public service of Name & Form. 




172 




ThaVs just how it is out there. 




Oris it? 

Is that...//? Only for those 
who don’t mind missing the 
whole point of this extravagant 
game show called Reality. 

Now pay heed 
and attend, O Best 
Beloved. Merely typ- 
ing in the text of the 
“Everything’s Per- 
fect” page, the author 
felt a subtle energiz- 
ing, a brightening, a 
seeing deeper into 
things settle into 
him. Of course. It’s 
like that whenever 
one approaches the 
Dharma! It’s a 
different kind of 
knowledge. And 
it feels different, 
because it is know- 
ledge based on the 
totality of our human 
experience, on pat- 
terns observed not 
only over one 
lifetime, but over 
many lifetimes. 

Unseen Order. 

We already know 
there is pattern and 
often unseen order to 
be found everywhere 
in the manifest world. 

With pattern so in- 
dwelling in the form 
of things, why not 
then in the way of 
things — in the way of 
our lives no less than 
the growth of a leaf. 

Periodic tables; 

Fibonacci spirals; S3m- 
cronicity and coin- 
cidence; rose petals 
and rites of passage: 
all part of the same 
unfolding Pattern. With a new 
eye. Everything iy perfect. 

What brings this whole 
gestalt into focus is belief: The 
simple decision to consciously 
affirm, as a working hypothesis. 



that this is the way things really 
are. 

But what about the “Real 
World” Plan? (Or non-plan, as the 
case may be.) ‘Wo problem,” says 






the Sage, “no real dualism here, 
but a clearly dffined relationship.” 
The “Everj^ing’s Perfect” Plan is 
simply three dimensional to the two 
dimensions of the Non-Plan. It 
doesn’t contradict it, it contains 



it. The ultimate proof of the Pat- 
em Plan is simply that it works. 
Believed in or not, it is in sync 
with the deeper rhythms of reality, 
and is open to the confirmation of 
subjective field testing. 

Meditation on 
Location, 
only way to 
confirm the Pat- 
tern Plan is by 
entering it. Voy- 
eurs will discover 
httle-and wind up 
only confirming 
their worst suspic- 
ions. But em- 
bracing it initiates a 
new and immediate 
sense of forward mo- 
tion, and a correspond- 
ing Doppler shift in 
re^ity. Everything 
moves in a new fight. 

The “real world” 
turns around and 
opens, revealing that 
Everything seemed 
planless only because 
there are more plans 
than are looked mr — 
than we’ve dreamed 
of. It’s all Plan! All 
change and expan- 
sion, all movement 
into openness. 

At this point,all 
hindrances and hassles 
are revealed as curri- 
culum-your curricu- 
lum-to be passed and 
left behind. Complain- 
ing and self pity and 
faultfinding are shown 
up as obvious energy 
rip-offs: distractions 

from your real task of 
discovering WHAT’S 
really going on; WHY 
everything is penect. And then 
acting appropriately. 

But to nilly exploit this calls 
for something of the attitude of the 
samurai. 



173 



The Way of the 
Samurai: @ 

Meet every 
second in life as 
challenge; 
respond fully to 
whatever happens 
without anxiety. 
Or complaint. 

Or clinging. 





HIS IDEAL IS TO BRING TO 
EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE THE 
SAME TOTALITY OF ATTEN- 
TION THAT HE CARRIES ONTO 

THE FIELDS OF BATTLE. 



WE MIGHT CALL THIS 








TJu mind is digiud^ 
But t/U spirit is amdog. 



IT is not a paranoid but a general, electric focus of attcniion 
dial the Samurai cultivates: 

In a lull of battle, the ideal wairior may well pause 

to admire a newly opened crocus, 

or compose a haiku on the transitory nature of life. 



OR WAKEFULNESS 

OR ZEN 









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I we make 



contact with a 
deeper, 

unwavering kind 
of understanding, 
our attention starts 
to shake its 
addiction to the 
superficial. 

Once deprived of 
their surface 
fascination, 
external events 
cease to be as 
primary as they 
once seemed. 

there’s a lot more 
open space for 
the action to take 
place in. 



True life Drama lightens 
up. On the edge of the 
Great Mystery, your act 
acquires more the flavor 
of a chess game. 

This shift in relationship with 
the circumstances of our 
life is nothing less than the 
‘transmutotton" sought by 
the alchemists of old; the 
lead of a rudderless no- 
exit universe is turned into 
the gold of an ordered 
and infinite Cosmos. 

Not the least of the virtues 

of this exparTsive 

condition is that it's a lot 

easier to have a clear 

perspective on ■ ^ 

yourself 




177 




o I haven’t 
really master- 
ed the Mac? In plainer lan- 
guage, I haven't mastered 
myself. How naturally was 
our graphic safari sucked 
down the digital undertow! 

Reviewing the entire jour- 
ney, going right back to the 
fascinating experiences in 
the first chapter which set 
this entire book in motion, I 
can see that I was setting 
myself up to slip away from 



wakefulness right from the 
start. 

Better take a closer look 
at fascinating experiences. 
Can it be that the unreflec- 
tive search for the fasci- 
nating experience qualifies 
as the premier delusion of 
our time? 

Instantly part of me files 
protest-Wflfldt/fl mean, 
delusion? What's your prob- 
lem, anyway? 

A touch of outrage is 




with no 




-The I Ching 



generally good indication 
you're on the right track. I 
think this line of inquiry has 
lead us into a major cultural 
heresy . 

What is modem civiliza- 
tion geared up for if not 
the fascinating experi- 
ence? Isn't that the good 
hfe, what we're aiming for? 
Art! Music! Creativity! 
Culture! People Magazinel 
That feeling! Going for It! 
Isn't that what it's all about? 



Happily (or sadly, depend- 
ing on where you're coming 
from) the answer is no, not if 
you're really interested in 
the Major 
Leagues 
of 




179 






ut our fascination with the creative flow-that 
feeling — is not without good reason. The creative 
viv^' ^ "freedom of the artist within his discipline can be a fore- 
i^te, a coming attraction of the limitless freedom of the spirit.* 

Similarly, the controlled abandon that lifts the artist beyond the rational grid is a reflection 
Yet there is a vast difference between the two! “Creative 
freedom” is like scratching your foot with your shoe on. Why 
settle for that when there’s the abiding and profound satisfaction 
of a truly radical transformation available. Totality and wakeful- 
ness in every moment. Take off the shoe. The irony is that attach- 
ment to ‘the fascinating’ is simply one of the best ways going to 
stay out of the pool indefinitely. 

The clear open space at the center changes everything. When 
life is full there is no history, nothing to report..r/ie tranquility 
of the heart has no edges. 

Fascinating experiences are just another test, another trance 
to break out of. Let us look instead in another direction. 





180 





There are well-mapped out ways of accomplishing this transition. 

On reflection, let me qualify this statement. For us, in our tilted, technoidal-analydcal civilization, the 
right-brain experience is the Opening. But to the animistic brain of Conan, and other denizens of any emotiona 
intuitive society (mostly past), no doubt a left-brain evolution could precipitate a glimpse of the crystalline 



perfections of divine harmony. Perhaps that’s just what happened to that bunch of barbaric 
Peloponnesian tribes who caught the light, turned into Grcdcs, and ; 



invented Western Civilization. 




Don’t be fooled! 

There are many paths, 
but ultimately all of them 
describe ways to “do” something 
that really can’t be described a all. 
What can* t be said can* t be said, and it 
can* t be whistled either. 

If it could, mankind would have achieved 
universal enlightenment long ago, 
and the game would have been called 
for lack of interest... 



Proceed 

with 

caution. 



Keep 
yr feet 
on the 
ground. 



Think 
U., deeply. 





182 



DEEPER THINKING 

Beyond the biocomputer. 

To penetrate our 
sleepwalking 
addiction with 
surface activity and 
surface thinking, 
we have to 
cultivate an 
awakened, deeper 
thinking. 

Tliis deeper 
thinking is a step 
back from both left 
and right-brain 
activity. The shift 
from left to right is 
from the linear and 
logical to the 
holistic and 
intuitive. But we 
can also lift the 
focus of our 
attention away 
from these changes 
(o the field 
where they are 
taking place. 



Easy now . . . the ground itself is shifting! It’s a new ; 
alignment of our fundamental figure/ground perceptions: , — , 

FROM TRE MERELY OBVIOUS 0 




Pure 

Obviousness. 



A deeper level of meaning 
which resides in everything. 
Everything is perceived... 







Known... 

Through consciousness. 

A simple shift in our attention brings' 
this machinery of awareness into 
the foreground. 

Consciousness is as obvious as 
the ocean is (or isn’t) to a fish. 
The kind of perception that can 
■4 see the ocean is an alert, 
aware and utterly receptive 
perception. 

It is the quiet essence of 
patience. 

When we reach the point 
that it’s OK even if nothing 
happens, then we 

Come Home. 




HOW FAR IS THE LIGHT 
OF THE MOON 
FROM THE MOON? 



This shift is the open secret. It’s like 
taking a kid backstage at a m^c show. 
Oh! So this is how it works! Of course, 
how simple! 

At a skewed angle, all this can seem 
like a big ego study of “me and how my 
‘consciousness’ works.” Indeed, ap- 
proached in the wrong spirit, it is. But 
the real thing is not like that at all! This 
is the sacred event of grace; the birth 
of overwhelming compassion. Big 
Truth: the consciousness that un- 
derlies and vivifies jyowr life 
is the same pure 
conscious- 
ness that 

permeates everyone 
and everything and every- 
where. TTie open secret: all 
separation vanishes if we 
focus from afar and learn to dwell on 
what lies near. Nearest. On home 
ground... o/i primal awareness as it 
permeates every instant of our daily 
activity: The Buddha Mind. This is also 
known as: 












Ut 



■""•vul 



simply 







“You are independent, and I am indepen- 
dent; each exists in in a different mo- 
ment. But this does not mean that we 






are quite different beings. We are act- 
ually one and the same being. We are 
the same, and yet different. It is very 
paradoxical, but actually it is so. Be- 
cause we are independent beings, each 
one of us is a complete flashing into 
the vast phenomenal world. When I am 
sitting, there is no other person, but 
this does not mean I ignore you. I am 
completely one with every existence in 
the phenomenal world. So when I sit, 
you sit; everything sits with me. That 
is our 2^azen. When you sit, everything 
sits with you. And everything makes 
up the quality of your being. I am part 
of you. I go into the quality of your 
being. So in this practice we have ab- 
solute liberation from everything else. 
If you understand this secret there is no 
difference between practice and 

your everyday life.” 

-Shuniyu Suzuki Roshi 
Zen Mind, Beginner* s Mind 






188 






art tHe mirror 
as zveCC as the fact in it. 
tot art tasting the taste this minute 
of eternity. We are the gain 
andzvhat cures pain. Both. We are 
the szveet, coCd zoater and the jar that pours. 



-Rumi, 13th century Sufi poet 




J. 









The key is a little detachment. 
Only when we loosen the knots 
of our fascination with surface 
glitter can we proceed further. 

Into the deeper waters. 




191 










I 

I— » 

aj 

u 

3 

d 

d 

cS 

CQ 

r\ 

O 




+ ?' 









The Void? 

The zoned-out blankness of some cosmically beached, 
navel-contemplating soul? A brain overstuffed with mystical 
cotton? 



4 




4 








No. 

The void is a boundless plenitude at the center stage of 
human be-ing; an Open Space of the spirit that absolutely 
beggars imagination. 

We may take old Hung Tzu-chen's void as meaning a sim- 
ple tranquility, a desirelessness. But the word goes deeper 
than that. Indeed, it points into the very heart of our ^est. 

The Void! 

Lightfilled! 

"What is it like?" said one master, "I feel like a fish re- 
leased from a bowl into the vast ocean." 

O yes! O yes! O yes! O yes! 

Christian Mystics have called it "At play in the fields of 
the Lord." 

O yes! O yes! O yes! O yes! 

What is our current quasi-religious yearning for space 
travel, for the Silver Ships and the "...singing star-filled gulfs" 
of science fiction if not a primeval remembrance, a yearning , 
for the freedom of this birthright, this original state? Indeed, ^ 
when we contemplate the staggering vistas of outermost 
space, of millions beyond spinning millions of galaxies, we 
sense, if only fleetingly, the rapt vision of the mystical 

""Worlds without end..." 



4 



-3He- 









Bodhidharma was the fir 
patriarch of Zen. He trave 
to China and was taken t^ the 
Emp>eror, a pious man who had 
built mamy temples and monas- 
teries during his reign. 



''What merit have/ I gained 
from all these actions?" asked 
the Empxjror. 



Bodhidharma said: i[None." 



"What then is the mst prin 
dple of holiness?" aske\l the be 
wildered Emperor. 



Bodhidharma said: 








194 





No holiness.^^ 




The Emperor did not 
quite understand. 

Bodhidharma went on 
his way. 

But if we understand, if 
we catch the drift, if we 
want a piece of the 
action — what next? 

Loosen your belt and get 
on with it! Reprogram. 
Better yet, deprogram. 



Meaning, exactly, 
what? 



The basic Zen strategy is 
zazen. Sitting still, alert, 
attention to breath. 

There is a subtle link 
between the movements of 
the mind and the breath. 
When we bring the focus of 
the mind to the breath, and 
the two start moving easily 
together, things simplify. 
Doors open, knots are untied. 
The hidden workings of the 
intellect, which create our 
notions of what we and 
the world are become 
clearer. 

The work has begun,. 



Zazen is a foundation. An 
invaluable tool. But the essen- 
tial matter is always a return 
to original, naked perception. 




44 



Q 




^ne summer night at the 
shore, this chap, who is a paranoid 
type to begin with, OK, is walking 
home along a narrow path when yi! 
he almost steps barefoot smack on 
top of a large snake coiled in the 
sand. The poor guy almost has a 
coronary! He beats a quick retreat, 
and spends the night on a neighbor’s 
couch. 

“In the clear light of morning he 
returns and finds the snake is still 
there. Only — now get this — it’s just 
a length of old rope lying across 
the path!’ 



THE ^ 


¥ H O L E E 


: A R T H 


I S T 


' H 


[ 1 


S S ] 


NAP 


^ E 



L. 



ikewise the whole earth is 
the rope. The whole earth is 
Form; the whole earth is 
Emptiness. Heaven or Hell. The 
Manifest or the Secret. 

It all depends on how IT is 
approached. Empty or full. ( ^ 

In the clear light of our ^ j 
morning, we too shall be 
amazed: The way things 
Are is so utterly dissimilar to 
the way things seem... 

And the way things Are is so 
utterly similar to the way things 
seem. 

And the two ways are com- 
pletely merged. 

“Split the stick and I 
am there the gnostic Jesus 
says. “Lift the stone and 
there am I.” 

Still we duck and dodge 
through life in an endless sweat 
over the same ol* snake-in-the- 
rope. Snake, the Deceiver, leads 
us by the nose, grips our heart, 
makes us tremble with fear (or 
desire), laugh, cry, hate, love... 

Opinions and ideas and 
hopes and fears and other agen- 
das created the snake-in-the- i 
rope illusion. All together they 
constitute our program — 
the litany of reasons why we’re 
“paranoid to begin with.” 

Ideas in general are useful 
tools; moving stuff around in 
our heads is usually easier than 
dragging it around out there. It’s 
an essential part of survival. But 
we get caught up in our snake-in- 
the-rope notions of what’s go- 
ing on, and lose access to our 
ORIGINAL KNOWLEDGE of 
what’s really going on. 






Neither 

right-brain 

nor 

left-brain 

routines 

can really help cut through the 
“illusion of the snake.” 
Because: 
they both 

have a vested interest 
in maintaining 
the old cat-and-mouse, 
perceiver-and-perceived 
relationship with the world 
that supports the illusion. 

In plain English, 
their source code is corrupt. 

BUT 

when the two modes 
are harmonized, 
the mind balanced, 
we can explore the possibilities 
of 

gently sliding between thenv, 
dropping 

to a deeper faculty: 
Fearless, compassionate, 
unattatched, 
transparent, 

generous enough to let go of entire 
reality systems in a single bound. 

Chuang Tzu had something to say 
on the subject: 




Cutting up an Ox 



Prince Wen Hui's cook 
Was cutting up an ox. 

Out went a hand, 

Down went a shoulder. 

He planted a foot. 

He pressed with a knee. 

The ox fell apart 
With a whisper. 

The bright cleaver murmured 
Like a gentle wind. 

Rhythm! Timing! 

Like a sacred dance. 

Like ‘The Mulberry Grove, 
Like ancient harmonies. 







G 

^ ood work!” 

The Prince exclaimed, 

“Your method is faultless!” 
“Method?” said the cook 
Laying aside his cleaver, 

‘What I follow is Tao 
Beyond all methods! 

“When I first began 
To cut up oxen 
I would see before me 
The whole ox 
All in one mass. 

After three years 
I no longer saw this mass. 

I saw the distinctions. 

“But now, I see nothing 
With the eye. My whole being 
Apprehends. 

My senses are idle. The spirit 
Free to work without plan 
Follows its own instinct. 



“Guided 
By natural line. 
By the secret 
Opening, 

The hidden ^ace. 
My cleaver finds 
Its own way. 

I cut through 
No joint. 

Chop no bone. 




200 



“A good cook, needs a new chopper 
Once a year — ^he cuts. 

A poor cook needs a new one 
Every month — he hacks! 

“I have used this same cleaver 
Nineteen years. 

It has cut up 
A thousand oxen. 

Its edge is as keen 
As if newly sharpened. 

“There are spaces in the joints: 

The blade is thin and keen: 

When this thinness 

Finds that space 

There is all the room you need! 

It goes like a breeze! 

Hence I have this cleaver 

Nineteen years 

As if newly sharpened! 

“True, there are sometimes 
Tough joints. I feel them coming, 

I slow down, I watch closely. 

Hold back, barely move the blade. 
And whump! the part falls away 
Landing like a clod of earth. 

“Then I withdraw the blade, 

I stand still 

And let the joy of the work 
Sink in. 

I clean the blade 
And put it away.” 




fttwn 

Tkt Way of Chuang Txu 

tnmolstion by ThonuM Mciton 

(with penniasion of New Dirociions Books) 



Prince Wen Hui 



“This is it! 

My cook 
Has shown me 
How I ought 
To live 
My own life!” 



said. 




nd is a computer show- 
ing me how to Hve my 
life? Hardly. Just forc- 
ing the issues. First issue, Zen. Or 
mindfulness: keeping a clear focus 
should a\ways-always-he Job One: 

One without a second. "How wondrous this, how mysterious! I carry 

Therefore walk ginger- ^ ufater." 

ly as a fox on thin ice HoKoji,Sth century Chinese poet 

around all fascinating experiences, 
ever vigilant of their power to slip us 
into the murky waters of obsession. 

But Onward! Also welcome the 
duties of everyday life as essential 
passages. Performed carefully, 
correctly — getting into them, 
without... 





202 



...them getting into us, they become a 
vehicle of awakening. This is called 
"Chopping wood and carrying water." 






Second Issue: 




THE ART OF THE MACINTOSH. 
OK, what about Art? It follows 
that art shouldn't be any big 
deal. Certainly no more than 
peeling onions! Simply an- 
other task to do well. 

When the gift of wake- 
fulness is sought and found, 
then the imique power of art- 
istic vision will appear of its 
own accord, easily, anywhere, 
as... 



203 






nd what of computers and our relationship with them? Ah ha! Thoughts on this subject would be 
many-branched and endless. Better to cultivate bamboo thoughts: respond to the Sturm und Drang of 



the electronic environment like bamboo does under a load of snow. When speculation gets too heavy. 



bend. Swish. Gone! Real awareness is just not into freighting around a lot of opinions about 
experience. As one's center of gravity is shifted out of the drama, the scene and the props simplify. 
The Mac is just another useful tool. Helps me write, got great graphics, easy to use-the thing can 
actually produce an entire book. Troubles arise only when we start projecting inordinant hopes-or 
the thing. So relax. The problem lies not with the circuits, dear reader, but with 



And sweet victory will only arise from within ourselves as well. Nowhere else. 

But didn't we all know that to begin with? What then did this whole voyage amount to? Let 
us pray that it has thrown a little light on the mind; rendered it a bit more transparent. Because, 



TO TRULY USE THE MIND, 





,i t'-^iii'i '-S' 



. V. '' '''=' 



ONE MUST FIRST GLIMPSE BEHIND IT 



5 





206 








207 





There is a turn 



The Buddha said 



bQ=*2l3 


fj 


H 




.i 


I 






ing around we must accomplish." 








It can happen 
After years of practice 
Or in an instant — 

Gazing idly out a window. 
Standing in a meadow 
Awash with morning sun — '• 
THE ROCK SPLITS. 
Attention FALLS into perfect : 
Realtime. 

An ease of the breath, 

A lift of heart's desire. 

A piercing glimpse of joy 
Beyond 

The walls of the world. 

In this instant you have 
Reverted 

Back to what you really are. 

Returned 

Home again... 

Effortlessly! 

Totally here, but also. 

Blown away into emptiness: 





GONE, 
GONE, 
GONE 
BEYOND. 



"1 have lived 
reason, wanting 
on a door. 

I've been knocking 



212 





on the lip of 
answers, knocking 
It opens. 

from the inside!" 



-Rumi 




CHAPTER 7 




this Book, nears compktion, and F go over the preceding pages, its clear that the (Madn- 
tosh and its successors may zued Bring aBout a new hind of graphic standard. I see it evolving as I 
luorhi shaped and guided By the technology and software. 

In fact, this computer isnt doing anything really new; there are professional graphic 
worhstations around that do all this and more, in incrediBle resolution, in color, and all for only a 
few hundred thousand dollars. (But while the higher echelons of the industry looh.zvith indfference 
at the resolution on the 9dac, and even the LaserWriter, the fact is, they re all over the place now. 
9^w and interesting things have a way of surfacing when good tools are put in the hands of a lot 
of curious people. 



214 








Bringing his mind down from the plane of the Infinite, the venerable sage beholds on unsettling vision.. . 



'Ji^n the ability to aeate, find, and mofify an unGxnited amount of images combines ivitk a 
personal control over typesetting and page design, there's a powerful temptation to sail off in 
relo}(pd and innovative ways. S^nd while there is an obvious danger cfi eJ(cess, with a little restraint 
the results can communicate fifficult and abstract ideas with ease and elegance, ^feelings too. 

‘This is not the terrain slick, illustration, but cf simple, iconic imagery. ‘Each page is Ukp a 
poster; a train of thought unfolds slowly in easy stages. Communication is paced in a dfiferent 
rhythm. Clearer ^efidly, and certainly more fun. 

‘There are a few tricks I learned along the way. 



215 








3ince a book like this should be abreast 
of current technology at publication, I have, for over a year, been forced to 
keep pace with every stage in the evolution ot the Mac. 

Well, OK, I got into it. But It's a disease of almost epidemic proportions 
among ail the MacFaithful. Constant upgrade technitis. 

it was no easy time. The Silicon Mysteries are spiced with bombs, incompat- 
ibilities, and grim customer service calls. My weary advice now is to make 
good friends with a local dealer (or user group), and put together as complete 
a system as you possibly can right from the get-go, then follow the First Law of 
Systems: When you've got a good thing, stick with It. 

Here's my Complete Macintosh desktop publishing graphic workstation. 
Nowyou can take on Harper & Row right from your office or electronic cottage. 

HARDWARE. 



A PRINTER 

Cf course the LaserWriter. Costly, but it's already a thousand bucks cheaper 
now than when 1 bought mine. If you're serious there's no other choice. Don't 
buy any future clone unless it can do fulFpage graphics. 

A HARD DISK 

If you are doing mae than a newsletter, this is where it's at. Even if ail you're 
doing is a newsletter, get one anyway. Load a program... zipl Save a 
picture.. .zip!. How did I ever work without one? I started out with a CorvuslO 
megabyte. Built like a tank— not one falter in a whole year of yoeman duty. Its 
other main virtue seems to be networking capability, if that's what you need, it 
deserves your attention. Then The DataFrame 20 by Super Mac was recom- 
mended by some industry insiders, so 1 got one. Zipzip, even faster; very fast 
Indeed, and no problems, it came in the nick of time: 1 had run out of space on 
the 10 meg. Corvus. it's part of the innate logt of the system to have everything 
you've ever done on instant recall. Now the new SCSI technology is dropping 
the price of hard drives into Everyman's pocketbook. What's that? You don't 
have a Mac Plus with a SCSI port? Neither did I. Got a SCSI port adapter from 
LEVCC. Works fine. More on the good folk of LEVCC later. 



A DIGITIZER 



Essential. A digitizer will be the alFseeing eye of your system. Anything you 
can see Is now camera-ready copy... a fallen leaf, a picture in this week's 
Newsweek, an antique book illustration, the next person to walk in the door. 
Graphic horizons open wide and a whole new world of... electronic plagarism... 



216 




TZ/y/A 



spreads out before you. Basically there are two options. (1) THUNDERSCAN, 
which gives the best resolution, but, since it fits into the Imagewriter printer, only 
reads pictures that can be fed through its rollers, or (2) a video digitizer 1ha\ gets 
its images through your trusty home video camera. I'll take the second: I think 
the freedom and flexibility of gazing around with a camera is integral to the 
what-you-see-is-what-you-get credo of electronic publishing, and worth the 
slight trade-off in resolution. Besides, many of the pictures I digitize are from 
reference books— and I'm still literate enough not to approve of yanking pages 
out of books. Among digitizers, I tried two. The first, burdened with the rather 
witty acronym MAGIC, was no slouch, but demanded that I fiddle around a lot 
to get an admittedly wide variety of effects. Ultimately, I opted for the simplicity 
of Koala's MACVISION, not to mention the fact that in basic snapshot mode I 
prefer its dot pattern. 



A BOX 

If you're paying close attention, you will have realized by now that we hove 
now exceeded the number of ports on the back of the Mac. The simple 
solution is the so-called A— B Box which lets you hang two items out of one port. 
Let me tell you who makes a great one: the MacNifty people somewhere out in 
the Midwest. So, you may wonder, why is it a great box? Actually, I suppose 
one switch box is just like the rest. Theirs was a little cheaper, true, but I Just 
wanted to give them a plug— a bunch of guys with a growing stable of 
interesting MacProducts who represent the best in humane interactive 
capitalism. They give lifetime guarantees, and they hove have an 800 hotline 
service number. Apple, eta/., take note. 



SOFTWARE 

PAGEMAKER 

Everything comes together In PageMaker. Not only the page design pro- 
gram for the Mac, Pagemaker is a benchmark of the programmer's art. Sell 
your Jacuzzi and get one. Two cheaper competitors are hustling to match its 
features for a lot less, but so far for the serious digital page designer, nothing 
touches it. Yet. One of its supreme features: it can shrink your bit-mapped 
pictures so that when the LaserWriter prints them, they come out like elegant 
rapidograph drawings, or grainy photographs. 




PageMaker screen dump. 








PAINT CUTTER 

For those times when you hove to manipulate graphics larger than the Paint 
window, and 

CUCK ART EFFECTS 

The obvious extension of MacPaint's legendary bag of tricks. Rotate, skew 
and distort. If you're getting a new Mac, and hove to buy a paint program, then 

FULLPAINT 

is for you. It combines almost all of the features that the three above pro- 
grams can do, plus a few extra tricks of its own. 

MACWRfTE 

With Pagemaker doing the fancy formatting, who needs more? 

MACDRAFT 

MacDraft is just MacDraw with a bunch of extra goodies— a zoom, a rotate, 
scaling, and more. Both of these are drafting programs for jobs that require a 
high degree of precision. 



Probably not In the necessity class; I got this three-dimensional modeler 
late in the game. A pure delight. Sure does some neat things, I wish 1 
had thought of more uses for it. Their manual, by the way. Is a model 
of clarity and logical thought, and wins the coveted Golden 
Mouse Hot Documentation Award. 



AND WAITING IN THE WINGS... 

Are extra fonts and Clip Art. Both are really a personal choice. In 
bit-mapped fonts, I like the classic collection of Click Art Letters, 
and the wide selection of Fluent Fonts. As for laser fonts, you buy 
them one at a time, so follow your tastes. I used 
a number of clip-art packages in this book, 
and they are noted on the page credits at 
the end of this chapter. I wasn't really impres- 
sed by any of them until I found the MacMemories 
Series of ImageWorid. The artistic level is way over 
anything else I've seen, and I found their imagery 
constantly inspired unexpected connections with 
my text. 



Rotadng vase by EASY 3-D. I had planned to end chapter 
6 with a page of intense Escher-like three-dimensional 
graphics illustrating the Buddha's essentially indescribable 
“turning around.” I put it aside at the last moment in favor 
of a simpler, less technical approach. 






Now, for the Order out of Chaos housekeeping chores. Life wouid hove 
been a lot easier if I had begun using these two rtems at the start of this book: 
Picture BASE by SyrDmetiy is a neat way to review miniatures of all your Paint 
files instead of trying to figure out what your cryptic little titles refer to. And MDC II 
by New Canaan Microcode, which no-fuss-no-muss labels and catalogues all 
those back-up disks rattling around in your desk. 

SWITCHER AND MEMORY 

As the theory goes, there is in pure Platonic form, an ideal graphic work- 
station-in-the-sky, of which all earthly systems are mere imperfect replicas. Be 
that as it may, as you work on the real-world setup you've put together, you 
become increasingly aware of exactly how it falls short of some ideal. (Which, 
considering the plummeting cost of chips, shouldn't be that far away.) For 
openers, the Ideal Graphic Workstation will do everything (just like a pencil) 
instantly. Hey, isn't that's what computer graphics are all about? ...Zip zip zip'! 
Anything less is a dull pencil, a compromise, and a drag. 

So, enter SWITCHER, a tight little jewel of code that opens up your Mac to os 
many as eight programs at once, and lets you-ap-jump from one to another in 




v/y//? 



less time than It takes to write about it. 

But hold on! When we've stacked up all these programs, thrown in an 
assortment of different type fonts, a desk accessory or two, and added some 
extra space for PageMaker (to handle those unreasonably complex layouts 
that do come along)— my friend, we've got a lot of K's to contend with. More 
than 51 2, more than 1000. 




These bamboo leaves were quickly sketched with one of the 
medium dot in the BRUSH menu dipped in black, then trimmed 
them down with a white BRUSH, taking care to preserve the 
sketchy feeling. They felt a bit too bold, so I turned them 
grey with PAiNTBUCKET, and puUed them together 
^ with OUTLINE. ^ 



The soution? Crack open that Mac and throw in a big. booming memory 
hop-up. With SWITCHER letting you dance from program to program like an 
electronic Nureyev, you don't want to have to leave out any of them. Soy 
you're in Pagemaker, with a sudden inspiration to re-do a Paint graphic. No 
Problem. Zip to MacPaint, touch it up there, zip to Paint Cutter, take it up full page 
and invert it, and zip it back to Pagemaker. Then to MacDraw, rotate some laser 
type, and back again to place it over your graphic. And no wait. 

So get a bigger memory, friends. I picked the LEVCO two megabyte 
MONSTERMAC, and glad I did. Not because it's better than the others (I wasn't 
able to actually make comparisons, so all I can say Is that it has worked just 
fine)— but because when some weird compatibility problems arose, did these 
gi^s give me fast help. Let me tell you, when you're lost in space with a crew of 
third party products that just can't get on the same wavelength— decent, 

conscientious help from suppliers is a blessing of 
inestimable value. LEVCO gets the Golden 
Mouse award for Service Above and 



Beyond the Call of Profit 



( OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER ) 

iZen and theartofthe macintosh 

started out with the intention of being a basic tretise on creative MacPaint 
techniques. But that was iong ago, and there are any number of excellent 
books out already that cover the bases. I'm assuming now that you know your 
way around, and would rather range around the book, getting Ideas and 
figuring out for yourself how did he do that? Still, it might be appreciated if we 
walk through some of the trickier moves and oft-used licks that made our life 
easier. But first, a disclaimer. 



‘Zen" has been volleyed about for some time in the West with a noncha- 
lance that would make old Bodhidharma grit his teeth. Therefore, let's clear up 
the difference between Zen and the aesthetics that grew out of it. The 
aesthetics of Zen are its costume, so to speak, its stage props, and a 
popular— graspable— approach to a profoundly slippery subject. In the 
course of writing & imaging this book, I perceived that certain elements of Zen 
aesthetics were useful guidlines for the twientieth century discipline of com- 
puter graphics, both as an encouragement to its strengths, and antedote to its 
pitfalls. 

However I don't want to further the trivialization of the Wayless Way Into 
artistic formulas. Indeed, as the book winds along, we finally swim into deeper 
waters. Alas, as anyone steeped in Zen will Immediately realize, our course 
often strays beyond the confines of its formal doctrines. 

That's OK. I'd like to think this book follows the Zen Fringe Rascal tradition. 
The eminent practitioners of this calling were two Zen buddies of ancient 
China, Han-shan and Shi-ti. Han-shan was something of a vagabond and 
hung out in the hills, on Cold Mountain, roaming around writing poems on tree 
trunks. Shi-ti, on the other hand, was an enlightened cook in the local 
monastery down In the valley. Every now and then, Han-shan whould show up 
unexpectedly, dash through the meditation hall— laughing wildly— and 
disappear. Yo Han-shan! 

That's fringe ZenI Cutsidethesutras. Whatever works. 

Just to be safe though, let me issue this public disclaimer absolving 
Zen— official Zen— of any responsibility for this book. Zen itself is clearly a 
mystery, and no less so because its smiling masters would deny even that, 
and declare it is as plain as the nose on your face. Whatever the truth of the 
matter, I make no claim to be a spokesman for its Great and Hoary Traditions. 

Is this book Zen or not? Maybe it doesn't matter. My interest is in presenting 
what I hove found to be true, rather than hewing to any predetermined beliefs, 
digital ormetaphysical; to pass on some hard-won info on computers, open- 
ing some doors, and once again, raising the Good Question. 






221 




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ISut first, a Basic Zen Story: Hyakujo was a Zen 
Master. He wished to send a monk to open a new monaster/. He called nis pupils and told them 
whoever best answered a question would be appointed. 

He put a water pitcher on the ground and asked. 'Who can say what this Is without calling its 
name? 

His senbr disciple came forward and said, 'No one would call It a shoe ! " 

/son the cook suddenly jurnped up, kicked over the vase, and went out. 

Hyakujo smiled and said, 'Chief monk loses. ' 

Isan became the master of the new monastery. 



bscure as these Zen tales sound, the idea be- 
hind them is simple, if elusive. When the Roshi puts a question to the disciple, the ony correct 
'answer" is one that springs from a student who has touched bright center, tasted his original^ 
Inseparability with the universe; this awakening will reveal itself in responses as innocent of fore- 
thought as a child's laugh or a flock of , 

pigeons erupting into flight from a sidewalk. 

(This In the moment quality is called 
Suchness.) Zen finds its purest artistic ex- 
pression in the deliberate/spontaneous 
gesture that flashes suddenly across all 
contrived wanderings of the imellect into a 
realm of utter simplicity. Yol Nobody home! 



I started off the above Zen excercize 
in graphic suchness with one of the special 
brushes (the diagonal line of dots). For this 
kind of dashing calligraphy to be success- 
ful you can't hesitate or betray any consti- 
pation in your movement. The trick is to 
keep a finger of your left hand on the tilde 
(~) key, upper left corner, which is a short- 
cut UNDO, so you can keep knocking off 
trial versions (and just as quickly undoing 
them as you try and get just the right con- 
trolled abandon in the stroke). With this kind 
of instant forgiveness, anybody can sooner 
or later come up with a gem. After a dozen 
or more tries I stroked off a respectable Z. 
To loosen up the look some more, I lassoed 
the Z, copied tt and dropped a few clones 
on top to produce the final multiple image. 




I did the big Z 
'Chapter Two" 

It's a good example of the 
would be just about im- 
mouse. Unfortunately, by 



Check out how 
ihc shadow under 
the underline is 
sligh^y rotated to 
heighten the 3-D 
effect 



with the mouse, 
on a graphic tablet, 
kind of thing that 
possible to do with a 
the time I got my hands 
on a tablet, I was so patterned to mouse-work that it 
was just as handy to use the mouse for most 
operations. One operation that the tablet excelled in 
was tracing, which was how I did the trendy David on 
125 and the samurai on 175. If I didn't have to give 
back my review unit, I probably would have even- 
tually shifted my whole operation to a tablet. If you 
know how to draw or do calligraphy, the feel of a pen 
is important. The tablet I liked best was the GTCO 
board which had some nifty features. Think twice 
about tablets which use a port (you need It) or soft- 
ware (may be incompatible with your hard disk). 
Check out any models with wireless pens— pulling 
that wire around when you draw is a drag. 






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Xhe Wizard really was my first picture and I picked 
at it a whole day just learning the rop»es, so there are no great 
revelations of technique other than something known to most 
high school cartoonists. If you pick a grotesque subject it Is hard 
to go wrong. Notice the white streaks in the wizard's hair, a nice 
touch easily done with the fine point of the brush dipped in white. 



k personal 



favorite. You've probably seen some version of this 
design before. It's called an Enso,the "circle of 
infinite possibilities," emptiness within fullness, 
profundity within simplicity... A traditional favorite 
of Zen calligraphers, it is often accompanied 
by a short poem, such as 



The shadow of the bamboo sweeps 
The stair all night long. 

Yet not a mote of dust is stirred. 



-Chikan 



The idea for a Mac version of this design 
came soon after seeing how holding down 
OPTION and COMMAND keys, while dragging an 
image, would ‘echo repeat" it. I wanted to have the 
word ZEN dense and almost unreadable at the begin- 
ning of the circle and open up at the end, so I had to in- 
crease the speed of my movement as I went around. After 
quite a few tries the best I could do was a circle with a nice flair 
at the end but a muddled beginning, and no amount of dickering 
around with the letters made it read "right." So I changed lanes: why not exploit the muddled 
beginning? I shot a little SPRAY PAINT over it, and lo! it started to look like a real brush stroke. 
That's it! I followed the lead, enlarged the result to full page, and the rest is Zen history. 



I his OPTION+COMMAND echo-repeat is a neat, 
often intoxicating feature. It must closely parallel some inner work- 
ings of the mind— it's great fun to just sit around endlessly doing it. 
The real trick is finding an appropriate use for the effect. Here, I 
lassoed a circle and dragged it around to make a delicious Tube 
Snarl. Then I added some smaller loops for texture. Note here how 
the little tube goes both over and behind the rest. First, it was drov^n 
separately. Putting it over was easy; any time you create a detail 



223 












and drag it over to the main picture, it wili slide on 
top. If you want it to go under. Just lasso a section of 
the main picture and pull it over the detail. Then 
bring both back to rejoin the mothership. 

T he logical evolution of the tube bit was the 3-D 
Snake. I (1) OUTLINED a 'Me.' (2) Starting at the top 
of the page, I dragged it forward with an undulating 
motion with the LASSO on echo repeat, making the 
first, smallest tail segment. Stopped, released the 
mouse button, pulled the original 'Me' to a neu- 
tral corner and (3) enlarged it a tad. Returned it to 
the end of the segment and (4) echoed out an- 
other, larger segment. (5) Repeated until the illusion 
was complete... 



I he Left-brain 
Tower was a more precise^ 
rendition of this trick. I start- 
ed with a BRUSH MIRRORS 




mandala os a base (OUTUNED a few times to create an intense micro-circuit 
look), and kept pulling out the center and duplicating (one story at a time now) 
with the MARQUEE, enlarging os I went along. Then ditto with the center of the 
center, etc., keeping plumb all the time along a forty-five degree guideline. 

^^ravAflng with SPRAY PAINT. A small break- 
through picture. The idea gleaned from executing the little scene here Is really just the 
first lesson in any basic life-drawing class. They take away your pencil and give you 

a big stick of charcoal, forcing you to draw masses of 
light and shadow. Model your subject as a solid in 
space (holistic) rather than outlining it os a symbol 
(conceptual). The SPRAY PAINT is your charcoal, and it 
might well be the most intuitive way to draw on the Mac. 
But there's one big difference— in MacPaint you can 
switch back and forth between laying down form with 
black SPRAY PAINT and trimming It off with the white. 
Once you get the rhythm, it's a suprisingly accurate way 
of bringing a picture Into focus— from the first vague Idea 
to the final rendering— and it short-circuits the tendency 
to produce spidery, two-dimensional sketches. I did the 
full page Indian face on page 66 with SPRAY PAINT. 




Also^ by tho time I did this picture^ I had gotten acrurate 
enough to start using the one pixel brush for detail Instead 
of always reaching for FATTHTS. It's faster, almost as 
accurate, and a whole lot looser. 



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Reflections on Reflections. Since 
FLiP VERTiCAL has made graphic 
reflections a notional craze, allow 
me to bring your attention to this 
reflection in the lake. Observe how it 
is not a simple flopped image of the 
trees above. It's been scrunched 
down a bit (foreshortened is the 
term). This is an oft-overlooked detail 
in the reflection business: when you 
are looking eye to eye at a tree 
above water level, you're seeing 
the other tree below water level at an 
altogether different angle, with subse- 
quent adjustments for 
foreshortening. 

rawing in silhouette like this is one of the strong- 
est suits in Macintosh art because good bold images get along swell with the Dot Matrix effect, 
and ovoid that spidery feel that is so easy to get into with PENCIL. Pick a big black dot from brush 
menu and scrub around to make a rough, bold form. Then, like Michelangelo 'liberating the 
statue from the stone," just trim away the fat until you begin to see what you want. Then back to 
black.. .white. ..black.. ..white. Bold black graphics also illustrate an important criterion of good 
design; does your page, seen from across the room, or upside down, sfill seem interesting? Are 
there contrasts, bbcks of light and dark, etc... or does It all just grey-out? 




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^ne of the simplest steps to a bold design is to blow 
up a graphic, big pixels and all. Sometimes this works and 
sometimes It doesn't— It's definitely a Look. If you want your 
graphic to be bigger than the MacPaint window, there are 
several options. First Is the labor-intensive process of en- 
larging section by section. Or move up to FullPalnt’s Jumbo 
window. (And If you're just getting a Mac and have to buy a 
paint program It's hands down FullPaint.) Then comes Paint 
Cutter for easy command of the whole page. And finally, 
pricey PageMaker does It all, any size. In a flash. 






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>ut there is yet another way of blowing up. ' 

The Turbo Zoom! IdiscoveredthistricklnanearlyMocW/brydmagazine.anditwinsthe vS^.' ' 

Golden Mouse award forthe neatest MacPaint stuntto date. Now pay attention... ..... .^. 

We are going to enlarge a picture without getting huge pixels. First, enlarge It to the 
size desired with method of choice. Then INVERT. Now, select the FILLED REC- ‘ 'ff' ' ‘ ' 

’ \\ X*.*;v*» 

TANGLE in the menu, click NO BORDER, choose the shade right next to ’ 

black from the palette. OK? Now holding down the COMMAND key, pull the ] . •: 

pattern accross the whole screen. It will fill all the white space with the pattern. . -yit.' 

And you will double click on the marquee box and INVERT again. Now you 
see your original design writ large, but in a fashionable light grey, a 
mere ghost of itself. Lasso it, and holding OPTION key, pull off a clone, 
move it a few pixels away, drop it, repeat until you've built the contrast 
back up to where it was. I bet this is a toned-down version of those ' com- 
puter enhanced" pictures you see of the outer planets or DNA molecules. 

I used it several places throughout the book, most noticeably on this 
goddess' face. Only here, I expanded full page in Paint Cutter, went 







grey in Paint, then layer- 






ed the result in PageMaker. 






A. ' 

*?r 



WO there's an instant 
when an Idea comes alive? 
Well, sort of. The early 
versions of this page— and 
there were about a dozen— 
were a lot more baroque (a 
polite word for overdone), 
using all kinds of multiple out- 
lining and such. One can 
really get into outlining, but I 
finally boiled It down to what 
you see. I started with the 
finished heron, which I 
copied from a book. And 








then going down, degrading 
the image more and more <^} 
by shrinking it down, clicking 
to freeze it, and then blowing it 
up to the original size again. The 
more you shrink it down, 
the cruder the image be- 
comes, and that crudeness 
is retained when it is blown up 
again. Moving upwards, 
as should be obvious, 

I simply stretched the bird out 
more and more, and poured 
in the grey patterns. 




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teen and the Art of the Rubik's Cube. or. *How do I 
get There from Here?" You know, visualizing the final version of your idea, then figuring out the 
exact chain of actions that will execute it. Most of the advanced graphic work you can do with 
this system gets you involved with subroutines all chained together just so. Example: I want this 
hand with a series of outlines around it. But the outlining 
process will do weird things to the hand as well as to the picture 
itself. So it's (1) COPY the hand to a clear workspace. (2) ERASE 
away all background. (3) LASSO the hand and COPY to 
memory. (4) OUTLINE away. (5) ERASE all weird effects now 
created inside of hand. (6) PASTE original hand back into the 
empty hand outline. (7) ERASE— with a bucket of white 
paint— some of the extra lines around the hand. (8) Remove 
one-pixel "leak" holes from the outlines so that when the whole 
effect is pasted back on the picture It doesn't blot out the 



2 



I 



2 







o make the dark-to-light gradation pat- 
tern on page 186-187. enlarge a strip of checker- 
board pattern (created in Paint) then trim down 
the black squares smaller and smaller into one 
pixel dots. That's half of the job. FLIPPING VER- 
TICAL and INVERTING automates the other half. 
Then just keep COPYING what you have done 
aross the page till you |||k have what you want. 

While on the subject of making 

things bigger and smailer... 



BIT- 

MAPPED 



ft % FONT OETS 

SMOOTH WHEN 

SHRUNK. OF COURSE 






I 

1 



TRY CREATING A BLOCK OF 

type in Paint with a bit-mapped geo- 



metric display font, slanting it an elegant 
degrees in EFFECTS- 
lo up 

MacDraR (then rotate. If desired). 



forW-flve 
in PageMaker. 



egrees in EFFECl^-and reducing 
Or, do up a block of type In 

■; then SA\fe AS 
In PICT format. You now have a type document 
that goes Into PageMaker— and can be stretched 
to any size and proportion (pages 6,7) with full 
Laser quality aJl the way. 




whole background. (9) LASSO, 
COPY, AND PASTE back on top Of 
original. 



ronic observation: The open- 
ended nature of the Mac 
easily leads to unbridled flights 
of 'creativity' which can often 
disperse into the ozone. The 
check and balance of the 
mundane is needed too. Quoth 
the I Ching, 'Unlimited possi- 
bilities are not suited for man, 
else his life will dissot\/e In the 
boundless." A friend who had 
gotten a Mac after seeing mine 
complained, *1 really had fun on 
it for a while. But then, one day, I 
was trying to play.. .and I 
couldn't play." True. Not only 
can the blank canvas/screen 
be intimidating, but sometimes 
omnipotence can be uninspir- 
ing. I bet he needed a real world 
project to get him Grounded 
and off and rolling. Even children 
in their most absurd and joyful 
activities generally start out with 
a defined game. 

“Men invent alarm clocks to 
wake themselves up. Then they 
fall asleep... dr earning of alarm 
clocks." 

-Gurdjieff 




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Now take this ox. i started off digitizing this feiiow, 
then eniarged him in Paintcutter. stretching his proportions out a bit whiie i was at it. Sent him 
back to Paint where his outline got cleaned up. Printed a proof; he didn't have the punch I 
wanted. Filled him with biack. Divided him into sections like a prime-cut diagram. Still not 




happening. But it reminded me of a woodcut. 

So how 

to do it? Simple. Aimed camera at my pine-planked 
studio floor in the faiiing light of late afternoon and 
caught a nice section of grain. Back to ox, and 
INVERT. Now he's a white ox on a black back- 
ground. Back to wood, lasso a section of grain 
& carry it back & drop it onto ox. Oops. . . UNDO, 
back to the wood, INVERT it, lasso & carry piece 
back to ox, PASTE down over white spaces of ox 
(excess grain disappears into black background, 
yes?) Wak over whole ox until he's all grain (actually 
reverse grain), then, Ta da, INVERT the whole kit and / 

kaboodle, and there Is the ox woodcut, everything right- 
side out. 






M it's in the Bless'd realm of PageMaker where 
creative design really needs this kind of reasoning process. PageMaker is engineered to keep 
each graphic element in it isolated in its own plane. This can get complicated: some elements 
(such as any bit-mapped art from Pdnt, or anything in PICT format) are transparent, like a film 
overlay. Whatever's beneath these will show through. On the other hand, any graphic element 
generated by PageMaker will totally cover what's behind it, os will any picture brought in fro.m 
the scrapbook. Not only that, if you want to work on something, it has to be on top... but any 
given element can be BROUGHT TO FRONT (top level) or SENT TO BACK (bottom). It takes a little 
forethought and arranging, but ultimately almost anything can be done. For instance, on the 
cover, the little flower (from Paint) hangs over the double-line border of a box generated by 

Pagemaker. It should look like 
(A). But tt doesn't. It looks like (B) 
because five tiny white ovals 





(generated by PageMaker, J[y 
thus opaque) were crucially 




Ik, 


placed as masks on top of the^^ 
lines and beneath the flower,^ 
neatly preventing the lines (also 
the symbol) from showing 




D) 

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through. Check out page 181 for 
a tour-de-force example of the 
art of masking. 




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Layering, cont. 

This deceptively simple effect 
of the dragon breaking through 
a border must easiiy have a 
dozen iayers. I wouid hate to 
have to rethink it all over again. 
It is not really made of stripes, 
but from three groups of round- 
cornered rectangles stacked 
dark to light, with the open 
center area actually a block 
of white. The stripes were 
tapered and pointed by 
nesting little round-cornered 
rectangles off center. This exer- 
cise with stripes illustrates an 
interesting aspect of our new 
artform; it took me the better 
part of an afternoon's Mocking 
around to figure out exactly 
what I wanted to do & the most 
elegant way to do it— then only 
fifteen minutes to actually exe- 
cute the final design. As I was 
putting It together with all its little 
sub-routines, I got a strong 
hunch that what I was doing 
had probably more than a 
passing kinship with certain as- 
pects of programming, com- 
plete with logic-loops, linking, 
reverse engineering, and other 
arcana. 




The Great Discovery 

The great discovery is always as 
near as our next breath, easy as 
opening a door and stepping 
through. Yet comnvan exper- 
ience is manifesdy otherwise. 
The reason it seems remote & 
impossibly difllcult is that we 
keep trying to push the door 
open. It’s not locked, U just 
swings the other way. In. 



^/lacErosion. Take a graphic that you're working on, 
anything, as long as it's a good solid. Make it 50% grey with 
a kiss from the PAINTBUCKET. (This was a logo made from 
ClickArt's large Boston letterforms.) POUR black into all the 
white space around It, then white into the black, and so on. 
Each successive pour will nibble away a one-pixel thick 
outer layer of the grey shape— sometimes creating neat 
effects, sometimes not...but always, if you persist, leaving 
you in the end with nothing at all. 








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1^ igitizing, more on.. 

1 first digitized a painting of a Zen sage, then the classic 





The gentleman is Bodhidharma, the man who brought the Teachings 
from India to China and became the First Patriarch of Zen. (The point 
of his remark in the book, by the way, is that one of the most famous 
koans, or paiadox.qucstions of Zen is “Why did Bodhidharma come 
to the East?" ) An interesting character, he is always deleted as 
embodying the ilcrce, rugged, uncompromising qualities of enlight- 
enment. 



n the philosophy of Digitizing. Basically, I'm a Medievalist at heart, 
darkening to a time when artists and writers freely exchanged 
ideas and images. If somebody else did a really neat Adam and Eve, why 
bother to invent another pose if you liked that one? At that time we hadn't yet 
gotten so spun out on ’originality.’ The point was to get the message out. Use 
whatever material is appropriate. Artists & writers viewed themselves less as 
originators than as transmitters of material; as such were less attached to their work, 
(Curiously this is almost exactly the ethic of the early hackers who started this whole 
thing: a fervent belief in the free exchange of all their discoveries.) 

Anyway, I think the pixeloted image that Mac digitizing captures is only a shadow 
of the original— the Idea of the thing, rather than the 
thing itself. Digitizing captures an idea. And when you 
finish playing around with it, what you have (if it's still 
recognizable) is an homage rather than a rip-off. 

In keeping with this, let me go on record as saying 
anyone who wishes to digitize any of the images in 



Macintosh drawing, and fitted them together. With this 
innocent act, I opened up the prickiy issue of digital re- 
touching and journalistic integrity: did such a drawing 
ever exist? And are you implying an endorsement of the 
Mac by the sage? —And so forth. Forget it. For us, it's just 
plain fun. Now observe the jungle vista below. No, In truth 
I have never peered through undergrowth at an ancient 
digital temple. What I did do is digitize myself and a 
potted palm, digitized my Mac from a low and dramatic 
angle, pulled the menu bar from a MacPaint screen 
dump, sketched a fig tree from an old National 
Geographic article on Angkor Wat, cloned a few hun- 
dred leaves, then mixed and served. Simple! 







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Click Art EFFECTS is an obvious ad- 
dition to the MacPaint vocabulary, 
and instantly becomes part of the way 
you electro-graphically think. Since it's 
part of the FULLPAINT repertoire as 
well, there's no reason for everyone 
notto be thinking 
warp, slant 
and spin. 



Monsieur Descartes here was the first 
victim of this new, bent outlook. It was 
so much fun to do that it took a degree 
of self-control not to distort every 
subsequent picture that came along. 
Ren6 was snatched out of an old en- 
cyclopedia with the trusty digitizer, 
skewed, and touched up with FATBITS. 



I think therefore / am. 

— Descartes. 
Break the wineglass, 
fall toward the glassblower‘ s breath. 

— Rumi 



This would be a good opportunity 
to elaborate a little more on Just how 
computers digest the teeming con- 
fusion of a world of blurred boundaries 
(like a face) and render it into crisp little 
O’s and I’s (like a digitized picture). It 
all goes back to The Frenchman and 
the Fly. 

The Frenchman was a 17th century 
dropout: Ren6 Descartes. He had de- 
cided that the entire knowledge sys- 
tem of his era was not worth his time: 
he was interested in generating know- 
ledge as opposed to accepting time- 
honored authority. As legend has it, 
while pondering the great impon- 
derables one morning, our hero's 
gaze strayed up to a fly crawling 
across the ceiling. Not the sort to take 
things lightly, he wonders, 'Now just 
exactly where is that fly?" 



\/ ideo distortion. 

These two portraits were 
done by simply moving my 
head in front of the video 
camera while MacVision was 
scanning me. First, in the op- 
posite direction of the scan, 
then along with it. turning it 
slightly as I did. I had the cam- 
era sitting on top of the Mac 
so i could monitor the result 
right as it was happening. 
Took a few tries to get it right. 
There's a whole lot of inter- 
esting distortion effects wait- 
ing to be catalogued: vertical 
movements, jiggling, chang- 
ing exposure, and so on. 




Type distortion: Print out a block of large type, then distort by 
digitizing it with the camera aimed at an (^d angle, or by 
bending the print-out in a bulge. Interesting possibilities here. 



And— Zuf o/ors— modern science is launched! 

Why? Because up until then, a fly was just, you 
know, there. But Ren§ saw in a flash that if an 
imaginary grid was superimposed on the ceiling, the 
fly would be precisely so many inches from one wall, 
and precisely so many inches from the other. 

You're not impressed? How perfectly obvious. 

But it's only because this idea of a 'Cartesian grid" is 
so central to the 'scientific process" and so totally 
integrated into our twentieth century mental opera- 
ting system/world view, that it has become like the 
ocean to the fish— Invisible. 

After this basic conceptual breakthrough, the 
rest was just a mopping-up operation. Armed with 
his new X-axis / Y-axis, Descartes quickly perceived 
how mathematical functions, which had hitherto 
been bewiideringly abstract, and all kinds of real- 
world activities like cannon ball trajectories, couid be 
reduced to connected points on a grid. 

The seamless confusion of the world was trans- 
formed into points you could count on your fingers. 
Or, os we say in Latin, on your digits. Get it? Digltai 
means: 'anything you can count on your fingers. " 

The grid was a magic spell that could turn things 
Into numbers. Very neat. 

Maybe too neat. Because, these predictable left- 
brain conceptual models are so comforting that we 
now confuse them (like television) with the real thing. 

Obviously I couldn't resist the chance to warp M. 
Descartes a bit out of his accustomed appearance. 



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232 



NEW POSSIBILITIES 




Simp[y trust! 

(Do not the petals 
flutter doum, 
Dust that? 

■!inmynunu 9fai!(u 



FOR MOST OF THIS BOOK I HAD UNCONSCIOUSLY 
confined my use of PageMaker's various graphic 
elements to the given boundaries of its page 
outline. 



Then, a simple observation: why keep to these 
limits'? 



Drawing right off the page out onto the desktop 
suddenly put a new vocabulary of great sweep- 
ing curves and huge segments of circles at my 
disposal. What overlapped the page would be 
printed, the rest would remain unseen. 

A hundred more possibilities wait to be found out 
in PageMaker, and in the other programs too. Or 
dreamed up: new graphic design applications 
are being vrritten right now that will make these 
ones obsolete. 



And new computers are on their way too, to push 
back the borders even more. What's Next? 



The new direction is always unexpected, always 
obvious after the fact. 

May we move fearlessly into the new territories; 
expand...into the invisible. 





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All that is visible 
must grow beyond itself 
into the realm 
of the invisible. 



-the I Ching 



233 





CKNOWLEDGMENTS 



It has been a long journey to finish this book, and without 
many helpful hands along the way it would never have come 
together as you now see it. Some grateful recognition: 




...To Apple’s Peerless Publishing Evangelists: John Duhring, who 
first recogniz^ the potential of Zen, whose enthusiasm and ready assistance never 
faltered; and Martha Steffen who picked up where he left off. 

...To all the software creators who sent me review copies of 
U^ir wares, but who received no mention in these pages. I am all too aware that 
many of you guys are start-up visionaries, deeply in hock and need all 
the marketplace exposure you can get. Review copies cost money; I 
feel a bit like I’ve cheated you. There were some terrific, imaginative 
programs deserving of mention. But the reality of nty marketplace steered this book 
away from the technical and into the literary. Zen would have sunk beneath a load of 
reviews. I kept it light. Sorry, that’s just how it happened. 

...To Coleman Barks, for his generous, very medieval permission to draw 
freely and loosely from his wonderful translation of Rumi, Open Secret, 

...To editor Howard Rheingold who just happened to know about both com- 
puters and consciousness. And to Buzz Ferver for bearing with me an extra year. 



PAGE CREDITS 



CREDITS. If not listed below, all illustrations and graphics were PROBABLY created by your author's own hand from scratch. Likewise I did 
not deem it ncccessary to credit fonts resident in the LaserWriters, except when they have been in a special way. 

P. 3. Font: Courier, in the LaserWriter; Stork: ImagcWorld's MacMemories. P. 4. Flower. MacMemories. Pp. 6, 7. “Gone”: Times, in Uie 
LaserWriter. P. 8. Vertical font: New Haven, by ClickArt; Japanese girl, by Susan Rare, courtesy of Apple; Mountains: MaeVision. P. 12. 

Apple: MaeVision. P. 13. Portrait: MaeVision; “Neair’; Calgary, by ClickArt P. 14, 15. Font New Haven, by GickArt; Woodcut: MAGIC. P. 
16. Japanese girl, by Susan Rare, courtesy of Apple. P. 26. Font Boston, by ClickArt. P. 27. Fonts: Basel & Boston, by ClickArt P. 32. 
Balloon: ClickArt. P. 33. Images: MAGIC P. 34. Font Basel, by ClickArt P. 36. Cartoons: ClickArt Publications; Fonts: Fargo & Boston, 
by ClickArt P. 37. Cartoons: ClickArt Publications & Axlon’s The Card Shoppe. P. 38. Cartoons: QickArt Publications; Font Dallas, by 
ClickArt P. 39. Images: MAGIC P. 42. Bodhidharma & Mac: MAGIC. P. 44. Explorer MaeVision; Leaves: MAGIC; Steele: MacPaint screen 
dump. P. 45. MacTcmple: MAGIC. P. 47. Portrait: MaeVision. P. 51. Calligraphy: GTCO graphics pad. P. 53. Font Babylon, by Mac the 
Rnife fonts. P. 54. Font Zeia Bold, by Rensington; Car: MAGIC. P. 55. Font flouston, by Click^ Hand: MacVisioit P. 56, 57. Font 
Basel, by ClickArt; Pictures: MacMemories. P. 58. Tree, cloud: MacMemories, Cosmic Man: MaeVision, with a nod to Be Here Now and 
another Age. P. 59. Graphics: Mac 3-D & MacDraft. P. 61. Mountain: MaeVision; Tree: MacMemories. P. 64. Fairy: MacMemories; Music: 
Pagemaker. P. 65. Mr. Natural: MAGIC (with apologies to R. Crumb, who in the good natured spirit of the times, never copyrighted his 
works.) Flowers: MacMemories. P. 66. Faces: MaeVision; Font Theta, by Rensington. P. 66, 67. Graphics: MAGIC; Font Babylon, by Mac 
the Rnife. P. 70. Font ETA Medium, by Rensington plus ClickArt Effects. P. 71. Lotus: MAGIC. P. 73. TcchnoPricst MaeVision, and a up 
of the hat to the Rali Yuga. P. 74. Font Basel, by ClickArt P. 75. Hand: MaeVision; Font Houston, by GickArt P. 76. Cherub: MAGIC. 
P. 79 Initial letter: GickArt Publications. P. 81. Graphics: MAGIC; Flower, Axlon’s Card Shoppe. P. S2. Descartes: MAGIC plus ClickArt 
Effects. Pp. 84, 85, 86. Images: MAGIC. Lunch break. 

About now you are no doubt thinking along the lines of the old Zen saying *‘Delter to see the face than to hear the name.'* But off we go 
again: P. 90. Chinese Landscape: MAGIC. P. 99. Face: MAGIC. P. 101. Type: Boston, by ClickArt P. 102. Cabbage: MacMemories. P. 
104. Gorilla: MacMemories. P. 105. Border: MacMemories; Japanese lady: Mac the Rnife; Flower: The Card Shoppe. P. 108. Calligraphy: 
MAGIC. P. 110. Font Michael Green, using Fontastic. P. 112. Thumbprint, courtesy Aldus. Pp. 116, 117. Type design: ClickArt Effects. P. 

120. Font Boston, by ClickArt P. 121. Bodies: MAGIC; Faces: MaeVision. P. 125. David: GTCO Graphics Pad. P. 128. Chinese Sages: 

MAGIC. P. 131. Number 5: Boston, by ClickArt P. 132. Hand: MAGIC; Macintosh: ClickArt Publications. P. 133,134. Face: MAGIC P. 
135,136. Font Mac the Rnife. P. 137. Face: MAGIC; Font Dallas, by GickArt P. 140. Leo: MAGIC. P. 141. Figures: MAGIC. P. 142: 
Leo: MAGIC. P. 144. S. Jobs: MAGIC; Vincent MaeVision. P. 145. Albert: MAGIC. P. 147. Sunset MaeVision. P. 148. Universal Man: 

MaeVision. P. 151. Scrambled Man: MaeVision. P. 152. Falcon Temple: MaeVision. P. 153. All images: MaeVision. P. 154. Confused Man: 

MaeVisiort P. 157. Images: MaeVision. P. 159. Rabbit MaeVision. P. 160. Screen Dump: Amazing (Macintosh Maze.) P. 163. Rat 
MaeVision; Graph: Microsoft Chart P. 166. Head: MaeVision. P. 170. Swordbearcr: MaeVision. P. 171. T7>e Thinker: MaeVision & ClickArt 



of The Power of Limits. P. 175. Meditation on Location: Boston, by ClickArt; Samurai: GTCO Graphichs Pad. 



s to Oyorgy L 
Pp. 176,175. 



All images: 



MaeVision. Pp. 178,179. Faces: MaeVision & MacPaint P. 180. "B": MaeVision. P. 181. Figure: Thanks to a carving by a nameless artist in 

~ ■' - Memories. P. 184. Images: MaeVision; 

Goose and trees: MacMemories. Pp. 
P. 199. Ox: MaeVision. P. 200. The 
Cleaver: MacMemories. P. 204. Hand: 
P. 217. Bodhidharma: MAGIC.; Fonts: 
& thanks to Larry & Buzz for doing it 




a Canadian church; Angel: MacMemories. P. 182. Bodhidharma: MaeVision; Stork: Mac- 
Old Sneakers, from the collection of M. Green. P. 186. Woodcut MAGIC. P. 192. 

194,195. Flowers: MacMemories. Pp. 196. Sage: MaeVision. P. 197. World: MaeVision. 

Cook: MaeVision, (from a drawwing by Rembrandt, and who would have guessed that?); 

MAGIC; Head: MaeVision. Pp. 206-213. Eyes: MAGIC. Pp. 214,215. Hands: MaeVision. 

GockAit Fargo and Boston; Flags: Axlon Card Shoppe; Pyramid: Miles Mac the Rnife I. 

Finally, as we close down shop, let us leave on the highest note: 

LIGHTEN UP 

Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. 



Cease your hankerings; make yourself like a perfect piece of immaculate silk; 
let your mind dwell on eternity; be like an old censor in a deserted village shrine. 
Let every thought of limitation vanish, and lo! realize the luminous. 



THIS 



is a light abounding in full 
gladness, like coming upon 
a light in thick darkness. 



like receiving a treasure in poverty. So easy, so 
free are you, that the weight of the world and the 
aggravations of the mind are burdens no longer; 
your existence is deUvered from all limitations. 
You have become open, Hght and transparent. You 
gain an illuminating insight into the deepest 
nature of things, which appear to you as so many 
gossamer patterns having no graspable reality. 

Here is the original face of your being. 

Here is the most beautiful landscape of your 
birthplace. 

This is the straight passage, open and un- 
obstructed. 

This is when you surrender all. 

This is where you gain peace, ease, non-doing and 
inexpressible delight. All sutras and scriptures are 
not more than communications of this fact. All the 
sages, ancient and modern, have exhausted their 
ingenuity and imaginations to no other purpose 
than to point the way to THIS. 




These words I’m saying begin to lose meaning; 
Existence, emptiness, peace, surrender; 
Words and what they try to say swept 
out the window, down the slant of the roof. 



Zen master Shih Shuan 



TURN AROUND. 



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